New O3C Survey Report: News Sharing on UK Social Media: Misinformation, Disinformation & Correction

Update: The report has been widely covered by media organizations, including The Independent, The Times, and The Scotsman, and numerous regional newspapers, and an interview with me was broadcast by over 180 different UK radio stations.

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Today sees the publication of a new survey report examining problematic news sharing on UK social media, which I co-authored with Cristian Vaccari.

Here is the introductory summary from the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C) website at Loughborough:

Very little is known about the motivations that drive people to share political news on social media and how these might be contributing to changes in our online civic culture. If we can learn more about the things people try to achieve when they share news online—and the extent to which these motivations might reinforce or undermine the distribution of false or misleading information—liberal democracies can start to think about how they can reduce important online harms. This report is the first to address these issues in Britain on the basis of a survey of the news sharing habits on social media of a representative sample of the British public. It was authored by Professor Andrew Chadwick and Dr Cristian Vaccari. We gratefully acknowledge the support of O3C data partner Opinium Research, which provided its survey services pro bono.

You can read more about the report, including a summary of the key findings, as well as download a full copy (31 pages), at the O3C website.