We present an analysis of traffic to websites known for publishing\u00a0fake news in the months preceding the 2016 US presidential\u00a0election. The study is based on the combined instrumentation data from two popular desktop web browsers: Internet Explorer 11 and\u00a0Edge. We find that social media was the primary outlet for the\u00a0circulation of fake news stories and that aggregate voting patterns\u00a0were strongly correlated with the average daily fraction of users\u00a0visiting websites serving fake news. This correlation was observed\u00a0both at the state level and at the county level, and remained stable\u00a0throughout the main election season. We propose a simple model\u00a0based on homophily in social networks to explain the linear association.\u00a0Finally, we highlight examples of different types of fake news\u00a0stories: while certain stories continue to circulate in the population,\u00a0others are short-lived and die out in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We present an analysis of traffic to websites known for publishing\u00a0fake news in the months preceding the 2016 US presidential\u00a0election. The study is based on the combined instrumentation data from two popular desktop web browsers: Internet Explorer 11 and\u00a0Edge. We find that social media was the primary outlet for the\u00a0circulation of fake news stories and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13559],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-440778","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-social-sciences","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2017-11-07","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"2071--2074","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"978-1-4503-4918-5","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"440781","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"10.1145\/3132847.3133147","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"fourney_racz_ranade_et_al_cikm2017","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/fourney_racz_ranade_et_al_cikm2017.pdf","id":440781,"label_id":0},{"type":"doi","title":"10.1145\/3132847.3133147","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"adamfo","user_id":30820,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=adamfo"},{"type":"text","value":"Miklos Z. 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