Partisan Asymmetries in Exposure to Misinformation

TL;DR

This study analyzes how political partisanship influences exposure to and sharing of Covid-19 misinformation on Twitter, revealing asymmetries and echo chambers that contribute to polarization and misinformation spread.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-dimensional analysis of political and factual dimensions, showing how polarization amplifies misinformation exposure and sharing behaviors.

Findings

Conservatives more likely to see and share misinformation.

Moderate liberals see the most factual content.

Highly polarized users amplify misinformation.

Abstract

Health misinformation is believed to have contributed to vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting concerns about the role of social media in polarization and social stability. While previous research has identified a link between political partisanship and misinformation sharing online, the interaction between partisanship and how much misinformation people see within their social networks has not been well studied. As a result, we do not know whether partisanship drives exposure to misinformation or people selectively share misinformation despite being exposed to factual content. We study Twitter discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic, classifying users ideologically along political and factual dimensions. We find partisan asymmetries in both sharing behaviors and exposure, with conservatives more likely to see and share misinformation and moderate liberals seeing the most factual content. We identify multi-dimensional echo chambers that expose users to ideologically congruent content; however, the interaction between political and factual dimensions creates conditions for the highly polarized users -- hardline conservatives and liberals -- to amplify misinformation. Despite this, misinformation receives less attention than factual content and political moderates, who represent the bulk of users in our sample, help filter out misinformation, reducing the amount of low factuality content in the information ecosystem. Identifying the extent of polarization and how political ideology can exacerbate misinformation can potentially help public health experts and policy makers improve their messaging to promote consensus.