Study: Conservatives Faced More Twitter Suspensions, Linked More ‘Fake’ News in 2020

Conservatives were more likely than liberals to be suspended on Twitter during the 2020 election, but they were also more likely to share lower-quality news articles on the platform, researchers said in a study released Wednesday. Scholars from Oxford University, MIT, Yale and Cornell examined accounts sharing hashtags supporting then-Republican nominee Donald Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Accounts sharing #Trump2020 during the election were 4.4 times “more likely to have been subsequently suspended” than those that shared #VoteBidenHarris2020, the study said. About 4.5% of users who shared Biden hashtags “had been suspended as of July 2021” compared to 19.6% of users who shared Trump hashtags, researchers said. Journalists and fact-checkers rated the quality of news websites for the study, ranging from mainstream and hyper-partisan to “fake news.” Conservative social media shares included content from sites like Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, InfoWars, NewsMax and Red State. Statistics for users using a Trump hashtag showed 50,973 shares from Fox News, 47,841 shares from Breitbart, 38,692 shares from New York Post, 10,719 shares from Daily Mail and 9,968 shares from Daily Caller. Breitbart and Daily Caller were identified as hyper-partisan outlets in the study. Statistics for Biden supporters showed 33,604 shares from The New York Times, 28,488 shares from CNN, 20,759 shares from Raw Story, 6,639 shares from CBS News and 5,715 shares from USA Today. Raw Story was labeled as hyper-partisan in the study.