The battle over “fake news” is out of control. Instead of dismissing a story that may be inaccurate as false or conspiracy theory, it gets tagged with the very Trumpian label “fake news.”
According to a new poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics, however, the perception over what is and isn’t “fake news” is wildly overblown.
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Facebook users aged 18-29 believe that nearly half (49 percent) of their news feed is “fake news.” Republicans believe there is more “fake news” on their Facebook feed, 56 percent, than Independents and Democrats, 51 and 42 percent, respectively.
When it came to how Democrats and Republicans view mainstream news outlets, left leaning outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC (between 49-55 percent) scored higher favorability than conservative leaning outlets like Fox News (44 percent).
While remaining skeptical of stories you read on the internet is commendable as that uncertainty would cause more people to read up on certain subjects, the level of distrust in social media and the mainstream media is pretty high.
During an exclusive poll briefing, Harvard IOP staff and students told Red Alert Politics that there currently isn’t a metric to quantify how much “fake news” exists on the internet and how much of it actually makes it to one’s Facebook news feed. They continued to say that this is the first time in the history of the IOP that they’ve conducted extensive polling on “fake news.”
