Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Denver news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Des Moines news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Minneapolis-St. Paul news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Tampa Bay news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Charlotte news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Unreliable news websites significantly increased their share of engagement among the top performing news sources on social media this year, according to a new analysis from NewsGuard provided to Axios.
Why it matters: Quality filters from Big Tech platforms didn’t stop inflammatory headlines from gaining lots of traction, especially from fringe-right sources.
By the numbers: In 2020, nearly one-fifth (17%) of engagement among the top 100 news sources on social media came from sources that NewsGuard deems generally unreliable, compared to about 8% in 2019.
- NewsGuard found that its top rated "unreliable" site, The Daily Wire, saw 2.5 times as many interactions in 2020 as 2019.
- Bongino.com increased engagement by more than 1700% this year.
How it works: NewsGuard uses trained journalists to rate thousands of news and information websites. It uses a long list of criteria, like whether the news site discloses its funding or repeatedly publishes content deemed false by fact-checkers, to determine whether sites are credible or unreliable.
The big picture: Engagement from the top 100 U.S. news sources on social media nearly doubled from the first eleven months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2020, the study found.
- That's not surprising given the major events swallowing the news cycle this year, including the election, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests.
- But the report, which was created using data from social intelligence company NewsWhip, shows that low-quality news sources tend to flourish amid lots of breaking news cycles, where a lack of certainty can be exploited.
Flashback: Earlier this year, an investigation from NewsGuard found that the vast majority of Facebook groups that were "super-spreaders" of election-related misinformation were affiliated with right-wing movements, including pages like Gateway Pundit, Viral Patriot and MAGA Revolution.