Sarah Palin leads GOP congressional candidates in sharing misinformation, study finds

More Republican nonincumbents shared content online from unreliable websites than their GOP counterparts in Congress, the study found

Sarah Palin and her fellow Republican candidates running for open seats or against GOP incumbents are sowing more disinformation than their predecessors did just a couple of years ago, a new study has found.

In a new analysis of news articles shared by political candidates running in primaries and general elections in November, researchers from New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics found that since the 2020 presidential election, more Republican nonincumbents are sharing content from websites known to have a reputation for spreading falsehoods and misinformation.

Researchers Maggie Macdonald, a postdoctoral fellow at the NYU school, and Megan A Brown, a research scientist, found that between January 2020 and July 2020, Republican congressional candidates shared links to news sources from unreliable outlets 8 per cent of the time each day.

Over that same time period, their Democratic counterparts daily average for sharing unreliable news sources was less than 1 per cent.

When the pair assessed the misinformation landscape in the lead-up to the midterms, the situation had shifted noticeably, with Republican nonincumbents seeming to account for the pivot.

From January to July 2022, on average each day, 36 per cent of the news that was coming from all Republican candidates was originating from unreliable news sites. The same was only true for 2 per cent of the content shared by Democratic candidates each day.

Republicans who are in Congress already were found to share news that was coming from less reputable sources with a daily average of just 6 per cent, while GOP challengers over that same time period were seen to share news from unreliable sources with a daily average of 45 per cent, The Washington Post, who shared the researchers’ analysis, reported.

When the pair of researchers sliced further into the data, they found that Republican nonincumbents – or rather, those facing an open seat or another GOP candidate – were sharing a larger amount of unreliable content than their fellow Republicans, with figures like Trump-backed Sarah Palin skewing the numbers so significantly she was deemed an outlier.

The former Alaska governor, who is running for Alaska’s sole House seat as her grand return to politics since stepping down from elected office in 2009, shared 849 links to news content deemed to be unreliable between January and 12 July 2022, acording to the study. That accounted for more than 99 per cent of her shared sources this year, as only four posts were ranked as coming from reliable sources, the analysis found.

The lion’s share of content being shared by the former vice-presidential candidate was coming directly from blog posts shared on her own website, which the non-profit group NewsGuard has qualified as unreliable.

Removing Ms Palin’s posts from the overall tally shifts the figures slightly, with Republican congressional candidates sharing news from unreliable sources 12 per cent of the time as opposed to 36 per cent.

Even without Ms Palin, that still represents a 50 per cent increase from 2020 when Republican candidates were sharing a daily average of 8 per cent of unreliable sources.

The pair of researchers conducted their analysis by relying on the criteria created by NewsGuard, which is a non-profit organisation that calculates independent ratings for thousands of news organisations around the world, assessing credibility by checking for false content, deceptive headlines, blurring between news and opinion and the distortion of information.

The group grades websites with a 0 to 100 ranking, with 60 and above being considered trustworthy and outlets that receive less than 60 being deemed untrustworthy.

In the analysis, the researchers culled through hundreds of thousands of social media posts shared by both Democratic and Republican candidates from the two time periods and assessed each one of the links shared using NewsGuard’s criteria.

The pair of researchers warned that they view this temped-up level of misinformation a presage to what will likely become more of a problem as the nation cruises closer to the midterm general elections.

“This primary season, Republicans have nominated over 80 congressional candidates who falsely say Trump won the 2020 election,” they write in the summary shared with The Washington Post. “Clearly, more candidates will be sharing links from unreliable news sources as we head into the general election this November. In a democratic society that allows politicians a great deal of latitude in their speech, what does it mean that candidates are increasingly spreading misinformation and lies?”

Alaska, whose electorate approved a process being used for the first time in the state, has opted to do away with traditional party primary races in favour of ranked choice voting, which will instead send the top four candidates – regardless of political party – to the general election.

The House primary race in November will include Ms Palin, Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich on the ballot.