Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

/pdf/social-media-and-fake-news-in-the-2016-election-1m4ttkb5mo.pdf

Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Mr. Halloran's working paper prompted me to look up the record of that seminal conference on "Popular Culture and Personal Responsibility" which the National Union of Teachers organised five years ago, to see whether much progress has been made since. Stanley Reed, of the British Film Institute, said then that it was amazing how little we know about the psychology of people watching moving pictures. We still need to know more as communicators, as educationists, and as sociologists; we ought especially to know more about the effects of the mass media on the mental health of children and adults. Mr. Reed said: "We need research into the effects of cinema, the effects of television, the effects of mass media generally. ... We need this over a long time, backed with adequate money and done at a proper professional level." We 277

The Effects of Mass Communication

Research has prominently assumed that social media and web portals that aggregate news restrict the diversity of content that users are exposed to by tailoring news diets toward the users’ preferences. In our empirical test of this argument, we apply a random-effects within–between model to two large representative datasets of individual web browsing histories. This approach allows us to better encapsulate the effects of social media and other intermediaries on news exposure. We find strong evidence that intermediaries foster more varied online news diets. The results call into question fears about the vanishing potential for incidental news exposure in digital media environments.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/6/2761.full.pdf

How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news

The abundance of media options is a central feature of today's information environment. Many accounts, often based on analysis of desktop-only news use, suggest that this increased choice leads to audience fragmentation, ideological segregation, and echo chambers with no cross-cutting exposure. Contrary to many of those claims, this paper uses observational multiplatform data capturing both desktop and mobile use to demonstrate that coexposure to diverse news is on the rise, and that ideological self-selection does not explain most of that coexposure. We show that mainstream media outlets offer the common ground where ideologically diverse audiences converge online, though our analysis also reveals that more than half of the US online population consumes no online news, underlining the risk of increased information inequality driven by self-selection along lines of interest. For this study, we use an unprecedented combination of observed data from the United States comprising a 5-y time window and involving tens of thousands of panelists. Our dataset traces news consumption across different devices and unveils important differences in news diets when multiplatform or desktop-only access is used. We discuss the implications of our findings for how we think about the current communication environment, exposure to news, and ongoing attempts to limit the effects of misinformation.

Exposure to news grows less fragmented with an increase in mobile access.

This paper analyzes the role of different origins to news media in selective exposure. We rely on a unique web-tracking online dataset from Spain to identify points of access to news outlets and st...

/pdf/digital-technologies-and-selective-exposure-how-choice-and-4gn374m3un.pdf

Digital Technologies and Selective Exposure: How Choice and Filter Bubbles Shape News Media Exposure:

Whether people live in echo-chambers when they consume political information online has been the subject of much academic and public debate. This article contributes to this debate combining survey...

/pdf/echo-chambers-in-online-news-consumption-evidence-from-3cu0cgfsbo.pdf

Echo-chambers in online news consumption: Evidence from survey and navigation data in Spain:

El objetivo de este trabajo es establecer desde una perspectiva comparativa un indice que permita determinar el nivel de
calidad de los informativos televisivos. Para ello, analizamos una muestra de los telediarios de maxima audiencia de las
televisiones autonomicas espanolas RTVC (Canarias), IB3 (Baleares), CyLTV (Castilla y Leon) y NaTV (Navarra). El indice propuesto
se obtiene a partir de las diferencias en las representaciones de cada partido politico respecto a dos indicadores: el
Grado de representacion politica (R) y Valor de los encuadres noticiosos (E). La combinacion de ambos indicadores permite
detectar comportamientos anomalos en los niveles de aparicion de cada fuerza politica, y en el valor asociado al conjunto
de encuadres ofrecidos en las noticias que protagonizan. Los resultados obtenidos tras calcular este indice muestran una
tendencia general a la representacion positivizada de la mayoria de partidos y una sobrerrepresentacion positiva de los
partidos de gobierno en aquellas comunidades donde no gobiernan en mayoria. Sin embargo, los telenoticias de las comunidades
autonomas en las que gobierna un partido con mayoria absoluta muestran en conjunto, valores menores del indice.

/pdf/propuesta-de-un-indice-de-la-calidad-informativa-de-los-2xazmeybvk.pdf

Propuesta de un índice de la calidad informativa de los telenoticias de las televisiones autonómicas españolas

The goal of this communication is to create a framework to isolate the neural reactions registered through EEG as a consequence of a specific input, among all those caused by an audiovisual. In order to do that, we analysed the neuronal register of the power change reactions related to specific cinematographic techniques, in this case the shot change by cut.

Methodology for Detection of ERD/ERS EEG Patterns Produced by Cut Events in Film Fragments

The widespread introduction of broadband Internet has transformed the traditional way of watching TV series and films. Beyond
the legal services there is a widely established ecosystem that provides unauthorized access to copyrighted material;
an ecosystem which, in Spain, represents a parallel channel on which to view content. We have analyzed the leading link
provider websites in Spain over a period of one year, since enforcement on January 1, 2015 of the Revised Text of the Intellectual
property act (Trlpi). Our analysis reveals how the ecosystem has been reorganized and its balance altered. However,
in contrast to the objective of the measures proposed by the Trlpi, the new legislation has not led to a reduction in the size
of the piracy ecosystem in Spain.

http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/106075/1/665427.pdf

Carlos Aguilar-Paredes

Papers

Digital Technologies and Selective Exposure: How Choice and Filter Bubbles Shape News Media Exposure:

Echo-chambers in online news consumption: Evidence from survey and navigation data in Spain:

Propuesta de un índice de la calidad informativa de los telenoticias de las televisiones autonómicas españolas

Methodology for Detection of ERD/ERS EEG Patterns Produced by Cut Events in Film Fragments

The ecosystem for accessing TV series and films in Spain: An outline of the situation following the Intellectual property act 2015