# The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook

## TL;DR

This study analyzes the extensive reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook in the Netherlands, revealing it surpasses mainstream news in user interactions and has grown significantly from 2013 to 2017.

## Contribution

It provides the first large-scale comparison of junk news and mainstream news reach on Facebook, highlighting the dominance and growth of junk news in the Dutch social media landscape.

## Key findings

- Over 5 million Dutch Facebook users interacted with junk news.
- Junk news interactions exceeded mainstream news from 2013-2017.
- Average interactions per junk news post surpassed mainstream posts since 2016.

## Abstract

Commercially motivated junk news -- i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards -- constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013-2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post.