The emergence of fake news in the modern political discourse has deeply affected the outcome of that very system. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, some people are more likely to believe fake news. In this era of fake news and general distrust towards institutions, where do people get their information, what do they trust and distrust when it comes to news, and what role does Facebook play in the news ecosystem? The factors that influence likeliness to believe in fake news are central to this study. Our research leverages declarative and passive data collected in the UK, France and Germany, to track both the impact of social media on democratic societies and to assess the impact of democratic disruptions on the reputation of social media platforms.

By fusing the declarative data with both the web navigation and passive data which were collected via the app they had installed; we subsequently made a segmentation analysis (K-mean). For each segment we obtained, we analysed their web behaviour and especially the types of websites they used to obtain information.

The results of our study seem to be paradoxical at first glance, but taking a closer look, they reveal illuminating insights into the new “digital democracy”.

Find out more in our whitepaper Social Media and the Fake News!