Oxford Internet Institute study finds lower-quality news gets more engagement

An Oxford Internet Institute-led study has analysed 10 million posts across seven social media platforms – and found big differences in what news gets shared and how people engage with it:

• Lower-quality news is shared more often on right-leaning platforms
• Posts that match a platform’s dominant political view get more engagement
• And across all platforms – even left-leaning ones – users’ lower-quality posts consistently attract more attention than their higher-quality ones

In this video, the lead author of the study, Dr Mohsen Mosleh shares the key findings from the research.