Fake News on Twitter in 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: A Quantitative Approach

Abstract

The flow of misinformation and disinformation around the 2016 U.S. presidential election put the problem of “fake news” on the agenda all over the world. As a result, news organizations and companies have taken measures to reduce or eliminate the production and dissemination of fake news. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software was employed in the current study to examine 1,500 randomly selected tweets that were used to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Results showed fake news are less likely to have analytical thinking. Moreover, both alt-Right troll accounts and alt-Left troll accounts posted fake news on Twitter. Lastly, Cluster analysis revealed that the fake news tweets are more likely to be retweeted and use fewer analytical thinking.