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Measuring the Reach of 'Fake News' and Online Disinformation in Europe

Richard Fletcher, Alessio Cornia, Lucas Graves, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2018), 10 pp.

"The purpose of this RISJ factsheet is to provide toplevel usage statistics for the most popular sites that independent fact-checkers and other observers have identified as publishers of false news and online disinformation in two European countries: France and Italy. We focus specifically on sites ... that independent fact-checkers have shown to publish demonstrably false news and information, whether for profit or for ideological/political purposes. This constitutes a more clearly defined subset of a wider range of issues sometimes discussed using the broad, vague, and politicized term “fake news”. We examine France and Italy as two particularly important cases, as both are widely seen as facing serious issues with forprofit and ideologically/politically motivated online disinformation. Based on a starting sample of around 300 websites in each country that independent fact-checkers have identified as publishers of false news (which, on this basis, we refer to as “false news sites”), we focus on measuring these sites’ reach, attention, and number of interactions on Facebook. We provide context by comparing these figures with equivalent data for a small selection of the most widely-used French and Italian news brands. We find that: • None of the false news websites we considered had an average monthly reach of over 3.5% in 2017, with most reaching less than 1% of the online population in both France and Italy. By comparison, the most popular news websites in France (Le Figaro) and Italy (La Repubblica) had an average monthly reach of 22.3% and 50.9%, respectively; • The total time spent with false news websites each month is lower than the time spent with news websites. The most popular false news websites in France were viewed for around 10 million minutes per month, and for 7.5 million minutes in Italy. People spent an average of 178 million minutes per month with Le Monde, and 443 million minutes with La Repubblica—more than the combined time spent with all 20 false news sites in each sample; • Despite clear differences in terms of website access, the level of Facebook interaction (defined as the total number of comments, shares, and reactions) generated by a small number of false news outlets matched or exceeded that produced by the most popular news brands. In France, one false news outlet generated an average of over 11 million interactions per month—five times greater than more established news brands. However, in most cases, in both France and Italy, false news outlets do not generate as many interactions as established news brands." (Pages 1-2) more

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Digital News Report 2018

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David A. L. Levy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2018), 143 pp.

"The use of social media for news has started to fall in a number of key markets after years of continuous growth. Usage is down six percentage points in the United States, and is also down in the UK and France. Almost all of this is due to a specific decline in the discovery, posting, and sharing o ... more

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Digital News Report 2017

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David A. L. Levy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2017), 133 pp.

"The report is based on a survey of more than 70,000 people in 36 markets, along with additional qualitative research, which together make it the most comprehensive ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world. A key focus remains in Europe where we have added Slovakia, Croatia, and Ro ... more

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Digital News Report 2016

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, David A. L. Levy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016), 109 pp.

"This year we have evidence of the growth of distributed (offsite) news consumption, a sharpening move to mobile and we can reveal the full extent of ad-blocking worldwide. These three trends in combination are putting further severe pressure on the business models of both traditional publishers and ... more