Where Do Election Deniers Get their News?
Publication information:
Abstract
In response to deplatforming and law enforcement surveillance after January 6th, the election denial movement migrated to less moderated and traceable online platforms such as Truth Social, chat messengers, and podcasts. We reveal a list of popular platforms which election deniers turn to for political news. Beginning a week after Jan 6, the COVID States Project collected 15 waves of surveys from January 12, 2021 to Jan 29, 2024 asking over 300,000 Americans whether they agree with: "If votes were fairly counted, Donald Trump would have won the 2020 election." We cross tabulate responses to that question against 48 questions about how they get news and politics information: "In the last 24 hours, did you get any news or information about politics and current affairs from the following sources?" As a percentage of all respondents, those people who strongly believe that Trump won the 2020 election get news from: Truth Social (59%), Parler (51%), Gab (46%), Fox News (30%), Facebook Messenger (23%), and Podcasts (21%). Furthermore, to get a sense of the geographic distribution of the prevalence of election denial and usage of these aforementioned platforms, we link respondents' zip code with congressional districts to produce choropleth maps representing the percent of election deniers in each district and correlate it the ideology of their representatives in the House of Representatives. This analysis of election deniers' evasive adaptive behaviors can inform and inspire targeted approaches to investigating and regulating the less centralized and visible crevices of online information ecosystem.
Trust & Safety Research Conference
Stanford Internet Observatory
September 26 – 27, 2024
Stanford University
Full text
In response to deplatforming and law enforcement surveillance after January 6th, the election denial movement migrated to less moderated and traceable online platforms such as Truth Social, chat messengers, and podcasts. We reveal a list of popular platforms which election deniers turn to for political news. Beginning a week after Jan 6, the COVID States Project collected 15 waves of surveys from January 12, 2021 to Jan 29, 2024 asking over 300,000 Americans whether they agree with: "If votes were fairly counted, Donald Trump would have won the 2020 election." We cross tabulate responses to that question against 48 questions about how they get news and politics information: "In the last 24 hours, did you get any news or information about politics and current affairs from the following sources?" As a percentage of all respondents, those people who strongly believe that Trump won the 2020 election get news from: Truth Social (59%), Parler (51%), Gab (46%), Fox News (30%), Facebook Messenger (23%), and Podcasts (21%). Furthermore, to get a sense of the geographic distribution of the prevalence of election denial and usage of these aforementioned platforms, we link respondents' zip code with congressional districts to produce choropleth maps representing the percent of election deniers in each district and correlate it the ideology of their representatives in the House of Representatives. This analysis of election deniers' evasive adaptive behaviors can inform and inspire targeted approaches to investigating and regulating the less centralized and visible crevices of online information ecosystem.
Trust & Safety Research Conference
Stanford Internet Observatory
September 26 – 27, 2024
Stanford University