A new study by three political scientists from Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Exeter, debunks the theory that “fake news” duped voters and led to the election of Donald Trump. The study shows that while fake news is a problem, the most dangerous distortions are covered by a layer of credibility. The researchers collected tracking data from computers of 2,525 Americans over the course of a month and analyzed their news consumption. The sorted “fake” from “hard” news sites and found that roughly 1 in 4 American adults visited a fake news site around the time of the election. However, the stories on these sites accounted for only about 2.6 percent of all the news they consumed. Trump supporters were more likely than Clinton backers to visit fake-news sites, which seems to support the theory that Trump partisans consumed fake news to reinforce their political attitudes. The study also finds that “fake news consumption seems to be a complement to, rather than a substitute for, hard news—visits to fake news websites are highest among people who consume the most hard news,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
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