While it’s tempting to assume that misinformation online mainly heralds from disreputable sources, it can also emanate from political elites. A recent paper from the University of Exeter highlights a new tool that shows Twitter users their exposure to such misinformation.

The researchers used the Politifacts fact-checking website to calculate the so-called “falsity score” of over 800 organizations and public figures. The score was based on the accuracy and likely truthfulness of any statements they made on Twitter. Twitter users were then assigned a separate score based on their exposure to such misinformation from political elites.

Political exposure

The researchers wanted to focus less on fake news in the round and more on the spread of misinformation by political elites, such as those who suggested that the 2020 US Presidential election was riddled with voter fraud.

“In focusing on what people believe and share, prior work has largely overlooked what misinformation people are exposed to,” they explain. “Although exposure and sharing are obviously related, most people share only a tiny fraction of the content they are exposed to, and therefore examining the content someone shares provides a very limited picture of a person’s information environment.”

The analysis found that when users had a high misinformation exposure score, they were also more likely to share content from outlets that were deemed to be of low quality. What’s more, they were also more likely to use toxic language and also display more moral outrage in their posting.

“This observation connects to research suggesting that political leaders’ rhetoric can drive the beliefs and policy positions of their followers rather than the leaders responding to the attitudes held by their constituents,” the authors explain.

The researchers also looked at the co-follower, co-share and co-retweet networks of 5,000 Twitter users and identified a cluster of accounts that tended to be followed by users who were estimated to be more conservative and who had higher misinformation exposure scores.

Ideological extremity was also found to be more strongly associated with following political elites who had high falsity scores when the Twitter users in question were thought to be conservatives, but such a strong correlation was not found among liberals.