Consuming Fake News: A Matter of Age? The perception of political fake news stories in Facebook ads

Abstract

Social media are increasingly being used by young and old as a source of in-formation. Fake news is also on the rise. The role played by age in the con-sumption of fake news on social media, however, is unclear. This paper ex-plores the generational differences in the consumption of fake news, first by discussing previous empirical studies in this field and then on the basis of an empirical study carried out between the beginning of February 2018 and the end of June of 2018. In that empirical study, 14 political fake news articles (e.g., relating to Brexit and Donald Trump) were disseminated in the form of advertisements on Facebook. User interaction with the fake content was tracked in order to analyze the number of users in the age groups 13-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+. The results of the empirical study show that the articles had a higher reach amongst the older age groups, as well as that many people likely took the headlines at face value without clicking on the link. The number of emotional responses posted by the pro-Brexit and pro-Trump groups was greater than those posted by the pro-remain and anti-Trump groups. All of the posts were permitted to run as advertisements on Facebook despite Facebook’s efforts to limit the spread of fake news on their platform. In the final section, conclusions are drawn, limitations described and implications for future research are outlined.