Facebook and Politics: Like, Love and Hate
Politics continue to dominate the conversations on Facebook with conservative political sites accounting for much of that conversation. That last fact contradicts the criticisms that conservative politicians make that Facebook penalizes them. In fact the opposite may be true. That is one of the many facts contained in this latest analysis of postings on Facebook by the analytics firm, NewsWhip.
One of those facts that stood out in particular — at least to me — concerned postings by Fox. Many of its followers on Facebook appear to be incited to… and like to… hate. (More on that later.)
According to Newswhip, politics accounts for more than half of the engagements (53%) on Facebook. Yet if you break out the most popular posts, the most popular pages, the most ‘engaged’ posts and most ‘engaged’ pages, conservative sources score very well. The people who follow the conservative publishers on Facebook are passionate in their support. (That’s even true when the story being posted is BS. More on that, too, later.)
Of the top 15 Facebook publishers, 14 are news related. Only one general publisher, Rumble, made it on that list. Of those 14, six are conservative, or maybe ultra-conservative. Those six accounted for nearly half (46%) of the engagements recorded for the entire group. (The other eight would probably object to being called liberal or progressive.) Further proof of how passionate the conservative Facebook users are, the conservative Daily Wire scored the top spot in terms of stories in the top 10,000 list with 847, followed further behind by Fox (531) and even further behind by CNN (467).
(Here’s the list of publishers cited in the report that I put in the ‘conservative’ column based in part on the analysis provided by mediabiasfactcheck.com: Fox, of course. The Daily Wire. WesternJournal. The Daily Mail. The Conservative Opinion. Breitbart. The Washington Examiner. Epoch Times.)
Back to the point that some of the conservative publishers’ success comes from BS postings. Two stand out. Fox posted a story claiming that the Biden administration had frozen a rule by the Trump administration freezing insulin prices. It got more than 311-thousand shares. The Washington Examiner posted a video allegedly showing six Democrats calling for violence. It got more than 205-thousand shares.
The Fox story failed to point out that the so-called freeze on insulin prices was one of many rules put on hold, and that it is normal for rules passed in the final days of one administration to be put on hold while reviewed by an incoming administration. The Washington Examiner video was specifically edited to make it sound like they were calling for violence.
As to the point made earlier that Fox incites hate, look at this chart from the NewsWhip posting. All of the publishers are playing to their loyal followers feelings and emotion, but none more so than Fox.
Fox scores in three categories of reaction: Comment, Angry and Sad. What does that tell you?
Let me help you by putting in some perspective. I broke out the reactions for each publisher as a percentage of the total number. The next percentage reflects what the average or normal percentage is.
Like Dodo 99M 43% 59%
Share Democrats 22M 9.5% 10%
Comment Fox 21M 9.2% 4%
HaHa LadBible 14M 6.2% 8%
Angry Fox 16M 7.1% 0%
Love Dodo 51M 21.8% 17%
Sad Fox 4.2M 1.8% 0%
Wow Weird History 2.9M 1.3% 0%
So, for example, The Dodo’s 99 Million Likes accounted for 43% of the total of all eight reaction types for publishers. Newswhip’s analysis of the top 10,000 pages showed that Likes usually accounted for 59% of the total reactions. Dodo’s Likes therefore are a little lower than what would be normal. Shares are the next most common reaction and in this category, the Occupy Democrats 9.5% is right about normal — 10%.
The numbers for Fox in its three ‘winning’ categories though is the interesting story. Fox scores more than double the average amount in the Comments category. You have to wonder…. or maybe not… what the tone of those comments are. It gets more interesting though when you look at the Sad category where Fox accounts for 1.8% of the reactions although ‘normally’ the Sad reaction doesn’t even register in the top 10,000 posts.
What is even more interesting still… and telling in its implications… is that third category: Angry. Fox’s posts on Facebook scores the most of any publisher in the category of Angry. Let me frame it this way: Fox accounts for one out of every 14 (7.1%) of the Angry reactions to publisher postings. By way of comparison, the Angry reaction doesn’t ‘normally’ get even a single percentage point. Fox followers are pissed off, and Fox fuels that anger.
That fact seems to confirm what other researchers have found in studying Fox. Here is the one factoid that stood out in those studies:
Apparently Facebook management is also concerned about the anger issue as well as the criticisms that its algorithms penalize conservatives. It is doing a survey with some very pointed questions. Others reading this may have gotten a survey request like I did. Here are two questions that stood out to me.
Is that weird or what? Here are two other questions that stood out to me, but are what I would call more “normal” expected questions.
Now the next question is will any of us see the results of this survey? Actually, the next question may be what are they going to do with this information? An even BIGGER question may be — does any of this relate to the decision by Facebook to remove Trump’s account after his postings helped stoke the anger that resulted in the January 6th riot and attack on Capitol Hill. Although the oversight board supported the decision to bump Trump off, what happens in six months when Facebook reviews that decision?
