Sandra González-Bailón, Valeria d'Andrea, Deen Freelon, Manlio De Domenico
PNAS Nexus
(In)Equity, Digital Infrastructures
Social Media, Visibility
Right-leaning outlets reach more people - even within the confines of online activist networks built to enact change and oppose dominant ideologies
We analyze social media activity during one of the largest protest mobilizations in US history to examine ideological asymmetries in the posting of news content. Using an unprecedented combination of four datasets (tracking offline protests, social media activity, web browsing, and the reliability of news sources), we show that there is no evidence of unreliable sources having any prominent visibility during the protest period, but we do identify asymmetries in the ideological slant of the sources shared on social media, with a clear bias towards right-leaning domains. These results support the “amplification of the right” thesis, which points to the structural conditions (social and technological) that lead to higher visibility of content with a partisan bent towards the right. Our findings provide evidence that right-leaning sources gain more visibility on social media and reveal that ideological asymmetries manifest themselves even in the context of movements with progressive goals.
Existing research suggests that left- and right-wing activists use different media to achieve their political goals: the former operate on social media through hashtag activism, and the latter partner with partisan outlets. However, legacy and digital media are not parallel universes. Sharing mainstream news in social media offers one prominent conduit for content spillover across channels. We analyze news sharing during a historically massive racial justice mobilization and show that misinformation posed no challenge to the coverage of these events. However, links to outlets with a partisan bent towards the right were shared more frequently, which suggests that right-leaning outlets have higher reach even within the confines of online activist networks built to enact change and oppose dominant ideologies.