Majority of Americans were not exposed to ‘fake news’ in 2016 U.S. election, Twitter study suggests

In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a website calling itself “WTO5 News” posted the headline “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president.” Pope Francis never made such an endorsement, but that didn’t stop the story from being shared, liked, or commented on nearly 1 million times on social media. Another site, the “Denver Guardian,” posted a story titled “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apparent murder suicide” the day before the election. Social media users engaged in some way with that story more than half a million times.

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