Supersharers of fake news on Twitter
- Date: Aug 12, 2025
- Time: 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Nir Grinberg, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beʾer Scheva, Israel
- Location: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin
- Room: ARC meeting room (199)
- Host: Center for Adaptive Rationality (ARC)
Governments may have the capacity to flood social media with fake news, but little is known about the use of flooding by ordinary voters. Here, we identify 2,107 registered U.S. voters that account for 80% of fake news shared on Twitter during the 2020 U.S. presidential election by an entire panel of 664,391 voters. We find that supersharers are important members of the network, reaching a sizable 5.2% of registered voters on the platform. Supersharers have a significant over-representation of women, older adults, and registered Republicans. Supersharers’ massive volume does not seem automated but is rather generated through manual and persistent retweeting. These findings highlight a vulnerability of social media for democracy, where a small group of people distort the political reality for many.
Hybrid Talk: https://arc.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/public-with-recording/
Meeting-ID: 620 9070 0981
Passcode: 635460