Republicans vs Democrats
The key finding from Buma and his colleagues is that Republicans share unreliable sources about twenty times more often than Democrats. Approximately 5.6% of sources shared by Republicans were unreliable, compared to only 0.275% for Democrats. Buma said: "We also found that 52.57% of Republican legislators have shared an unreliable source at least once in a tweet, while only 15.03% of Democratic legislators have done so. The good news is that a large majority of legislators (70.14%) have never shared an unreliable source on Twitter."
Although studies have already been conducted on the spread of disinformation by members of Congress, there had been no research into the role of state legislators. State legislators are the lawmakers in each of the 50 states. "During our research, there were 8,003 state legislators, of whom 5,712 used Twitter/X. These legislators rely much more on social media than members of Congress to communicate with their constituents and stakeholders, due to a lack of state and media resources," said Buma.
To identify misinformation, Buma and his colleagues focused on the quality of sources mentioned in legislators' tweets. For example, a media source website known for providing facts and making corrections when mistakes are made is considered reliable. In contrast, a website known for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories is considered unreliable. Buma said: "We used a list of 5,255 unique websites, allowing us to analyze nearly 400,000 tweets containing references to these websites from 2,943 Democrats and 2,740 Republicans."
Polarized topics
Buma and his colleagues also investigated which topics were discussed in tweets that contained unreliable sources, using so-called structural topic models. This method helps to organize large amounts of tweet texts into a smaller number of topics, using algorithms that identify concepts by clustering words. This analysis showed that highly polarized topics were more often found in tweets containing misinformation: people are more likely to share misinformation when the content confirms their beliefs and partisan views on a polarized issue. The most common topics were issues like COVID-19 policy, Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, immigration at the border, criticism of Joe Biden's domestic policy, abortion, and election integrity.
More research needed
More research is needed in the rapidly growing field of digital politics. Voters are increasingly using social media to follow politics, and on social media, elected officials can bypass traditional media, allowing them to say anything to their followers without scrutiny. "We see this happening in the Netherlands as well, for example with the radical right-wing populist Geert Wilders using Twitter to bypass the media, and with Donald Trump using his own social media platform called 'TRUTH Social,'" said Buma.
Although one of the main findings is that Republicans share unreliable sources much more frequently than Democrats, perhaps more importantly, elected officials are subject to the same forces as ordinary social media users. Buma said: "They tend to share misinformation on topics that are highly polarized and fit within partisan ideology. The key difference is that elected officials have more power to influence public opinion, making it even more harmful when they spread misinformation."
U.S. elections
"What strikes me about this election is the increasing absurdity of Donald Trump's claims during debates. For instance, Trump claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants in a small town in Ohio were eating pets. Although this may seem absurd, such claims fit within a broader trend of statements made by Republicans, as we demonstrated in our research. The danger is that people who already have a negative view of immigrants are much more likely to accept such absurd claims because they align with their partisan views. Additionally, the more sensational and extreme the claims, the more they stick. By attempting to contradict absurd claims, we also unintentionally help them spread even further. Everyone was talking about Trump's claim about pets, and now that I'm mentioning it, I am an example of that myself," said Buma.
Roan Buma focuses on political communication, public opinion, new media, polarization, misinformation and conspiracy theories. He is currently working on a project aimed at understanding media consumption behavior and the polarization within it.