Right or left, low-quality news links popular on social media
Cornell University
ITHACA, N.Y. – The spread of dubious headlines on social media is common across the political spectrum, according to new research from Cornell University.
After studying millions of social media posts containing links to news stories on a variety of platforms, the team found that news shared on platforms with more conservative user bases is, on average, lower in quality. When it comes to likes and shares, they found that news aligning with the dominant political slant of a platform got more engagement – but that on both conservative- and liberal-leaning platforms, a user’s posts with lower-quality news links got more engagement than their higher-quality news posts.
“If your post is in line with the norm on the platform, people engage with it more,” said David Rand, professor of information science, marketing and management communication, and psychology.
“It’s like an ‘echo platform’ scenario,” he said. “Many had argued that people on the right were better at getting engagement on social media, but we find that it totally depends on the platform. When it comes to the advantage of lower-quality news, on the other hand, it’s happening on both sides.”
Rand is senior author of “Divergent Patterns of Engagement With Partisan and Low-quality News Across Seven Social Media Platforms,” which published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rand said much of the belief that users engaged and shared false news more than true news stemmed from a 2018 paper in Science. But that research studied just one site – Twitter (now X).
“There are many studies, including a lot that we’ve done, looking at the sharing of information on Twitter,” he said, “and that was primarily because Twitter had an API (application programming interface) that allowed academics to easily access tweets. So people studied Twitter and then made general claims about social media.”
Rand and his colleagues wanted to analyze a greater cross-section of the social media landscape, so they looked at seven platforms – BlueSky, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Twitter/X, considered more left-leaning or neutral; and TruthSocial, Gab and GETTR, considered right-leaning.
They chose one month (January 2024) and analyzed every post on all seven platforms – nearly 11 million in all – that contained links to news domains.
To gauge the quality of the news site, the team used the reliability of the publisher as a proxy for the accuracy of the content. They used a ratings system released in 2023 that scored more than 11,000 news sites based on accuracy by combining numerous different sets of expert evaluations. They also estimated political lean for each domain and validated those estimates against established benchmarks.
The key takeaway: Across all seven platforms, the average user received more engagement on their lower-quality news posts. This pattern is observed even on Mastodon, which doesn’t use a ranking algorithm – meaning user preference, not just algorithms. promotes engagement with lower-quality news.
One important feature of their results, Rand said, is that they account for all possible variation due to characteristics of the poster. That way, they can see which type of news gets more engagement, regardless of whether the posting individual has, for example, millions of followers or just a few.
“So, we can say our result is completely not about differences in the characteristics of the poster,” Rand said, “but it’s really just about the characteristics of the content. It’s not the algorithm; it’s not the user who’s posting it: A user’s posts with lower-quality links get more engagement.”
Funding support for this work came from the Open Society Foundation.
For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
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Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article Title
Divergent Patterns of Engagement With Partisan and Low-quality News Across Seven Social Media Platforms
Article Publication Date
30-Oct-2025
How alcohol ads in your feed may lead to alcohol in your glass
Rutgers University
Teens and young adults who see alcohol promotions in their social media feeds are more likely to drink and binge drink, according to a Rutgers Health review of 31 studies that tracked links between exposure to digital alcohol marketing and real-world alcohol use.
Jon-Patrick Allem, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a senior author of the study, said the public debate about time spent on social media misses the most important point.
“There’s growing evidence that it’s not how long you spend on social media but what content you see that affects you,” Allem said. “Young people being exposed to alcohol promotions online is associated with alcohol use across different contexts and populations.”
The meta-analysis in The Lancet Public Health pooled data from 62,703 people. Participants exposed to digital alcohol marketing content, compared with those not exposed, had greater odds of reporting past 30-day alcohol use, binge drinking and susceptibility to use alcohol among never users.
“Across this international sample, those who saw alcohol marketing online were about twice as likely to report drinking or binge drinking,” said Scott Donaldson, lead author and an assistant professor of general internal medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Although youth drinking is declining overall, personalized feeds still can normalize alcohol for subsets of young people who linger on such content.
“Algorithmic amplification means a small cue can be shown again and again,” Allem said.
Researchers combed six databases for studies published since the emergence of major social platforms and combined results with multilevel random effects models.
Across the studies, exposure to digital marketing was associated with roughly 75% higher odds of any reported drinking in the past 30 days and about 80% higher odds of binge drinking. Susceptibility to drinking among never-users was elevated by a similar margin, and lifetime drinking also showed a significant association.
The signal was strongest in adolescents using social media, which now mix paid placements, branded posts and influencer partnerships with user-generated clips. In this literature, “digital alcohol marketing” refers to content designed to increase alcohol use, including brand pages, sponsored influencer videos, promotional campaigns and contests, as well as web and app advertising.
Entirely unsponsored content doesn’t count.
Many of the studies underlying the meta-analysis were cross-sectional surveys, which can detect associations but cannot prove that ads push teens to start drinking rather than reaching those already inclined to drink. The authors call for stronger designs to clarify what comes first: exposure or alcohol use.
Allem said his group is testing that question directly. In a pilot experiment with about 2,000 young adults, participants who watched lifestyle influencer videos that incidentally featured alcohol were about 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to express interest in drinking than peers who viewed matched videos with no alcohol, even after accounting for recent drinking.
“Subtle cues can move intentions,” said Allem, echoing an argument he made in a recently published letter to the journal Addiction. “We need ecologically valid experiments that track behavior over time.”
The review found that exposure was particularly pronounced on social media and effects appeared stronger for adolescents than adults, a pattern that could guide regulators toward youth-specific safeguards.
Platforms already collect age and interest data that could curb exposure, but industry self-regulation online is inconsistent, and age gating is easy to bypass.
“They could solve this overnight,” Allem said. “The question is will, not capability.”
Journal
The Lancet
Method of Research
Meta-analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Association between exposure to digital alcohol marketing and alcohol use: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Article Publication Date
27-Oct-2025
COI Statement
J-PA has received fees for consulting services in court cases pertaining to the content on social media platforms. All other authors declare no competing interests.
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