Hopp - 2020 - Why Do People Share Ideologically Extreme, False

Human Communication Research ISSN 0360–3989
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Why Do People Share Ideologically Extreme,

False, and Misleading Content on Social
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/hcr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hcr/hqz022/5840447 by guest on 22 May 2020

Media? A Self-Report and Trace Data–Based
Analysis of Countermedia Content
Dissemination on Facebook and Twitter
Toby Hopp1 , Patrick Ferrucci2 & Chris J. Vargo1
1 Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Media Design, College of Media, Communication, and
Information, The University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80516, USA
2 Department of Journalism, College of Media, Communication, and Information, The University of Colorado
Boulder, Boulder, CO 80516, USA
Recently, substantial attention has been paid to the spread of highly partisan and often
factually incorrect information (i.e., so-called “fake news”) on social media. In this study,
we attempt to extend current knowledge on this topic by exploring the degree to which
individual levels of ideological extremity, social trust, and trust in the news media are
associated with the dissemination of countermedia content, or web-based, ideologically
extreme information that uses false, biased, misleading, and hyper-partisan claims to
counter the knowledge produced by the mainstream news media. To investigate these
possible associations, we used a combination of self-report survey data and trace data
collected from Facebook and Twitter. The results suggested that sharing countermedia
content on Facebook is positively associated with ideological extremity and negatively
associated with trust in the mainstream news media. On Twitter, we found evidence that
countermedia content sharing is negatively associated with social trust.
Keywords: Fake News, Countermedia, Social Media, Survey, Trace Data, Computational
Social Sciences
doi:10.1093/hcr/hqz022
In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, then-President

Barack Obama called the spread of false political information a corrosive threat
to society (Higgins, McIntire, & Dance, 2016). Reflecting similar concerns, news
organizations have devoted substantial amounts of column space to identifying
actors who have profited from the spread of false, misleading, hyper-partisan, and
Corresponding author: Toby Hopp; e-mail: tobias.hopp@colorado.edu
Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf
1
of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oup.com
Countermedia Content Sharing T. Hopp et al.
sensationalized political information (e.g., Ohlheiser, 2016). Somewhat distressingly,

traditional renderings of the public sphere hold that political information that
is factually incorrect or distortedly biased is not supposed to exist in the public
sphere, as civil society will, theoretically, recognize its uselessness and force it out
(Habermas, 1991). Indeed, the gatekeeping metaphor articulates the processes by

which journalists dutifully guard the public sphere, sift through reams of information
for verification, and then disseminate only accurate, pertinent, and important news
(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). However, the emergence of social media, coupled with
rapidly declining levels of institutional and social trust (e.g., Edelman, 2017) and the
weakening authority of professional journalists (e.g., Tong, 2018), has resulted in an
information environment that is perhaps uniquely conducive to the spread of untrue
and or otherwise misleading political information.
In light of structural changes to informational, social, and political ecosystems,
and with the so-called fake news epidemic as a backdrop, this study set out to
better understand how false and hyper-partisan political information is spread on
social media. We argue that information commonly referred to as fake news may
be better understood as a type of “countermedia” content (e.g., Ylä-Anttila, Bauvois,
& Pyrhönen, 2019), or web-based information that employs a combination of false,
biased, and misleading claims as a means of countering the knowledge traditionally
produced by the mainstream press. We specifically suggest that countermedia content
is typically ideologically extreme, and tends to invoke themes of mistrust in both
social others and in the mainstream news media. Furthermore, using prior work on
selective sharing (Shin & Thorson, 2017), we predict that countermedia content is
most likely to be shared on social media by those who are ideologically extreme, those
with low levels of social trust, and those with low levels of trust in the mainstream
news. These hypotheses are tested using a unique data set that combined trace data
from Facebook and Twitter with self-reported survey data.
The mainstream news media as an epistemic authority
Most descriptions of the functions of the media in the 20th century implicitly utilize
the theoretical visioning of the public sphere cultivated by Habermas (1991). Essential
to these accounts of the public sphere’s proper functioning is the idea of gatekeeping,
which is the process by which a piece of information gets selected, altered, and mor-
phed into a digestible message suitable for large-scale distribution and consumption
(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). During the gatekeeping process, a journalist gathers as
much information as possible and then selects—based on a host of factors—the pieces
of information most important for the democratic foundation of a society. Thus,
for at least the last several decades, journalists have normatively engaged in a set of
practices where they objectively assess information and provide a truthful, good-faith
rendering of reality that represents all legitimate viewpoints (Schudson, 2001). In this
way, the mainstream media assumed the role of an epistemic authority within the
dominant public sphere (Bruns, 2018).
2 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

T. Hopp et al. Countermedia Content Sharing
Presently, however, the mainstream press’ capacity to serve as an epistemic author-

ity is regularly challenged (e.g., Rojas, 2010; Tong, 2018). This denigration of author-
ity creates new epistemic opportunities for non-journalistic entities. Indeed, accord-
ing to Kreiss (2017, p. 452), “as a result of a world that has changed around them
economically, technologically, and politically, professional journalists now face mul-

tiple crises . . . including of legitimacy.” Such a weakening of authority effectively
undermines “journalism’s ability to serve as a communicative institution in the civil
sphere that ultimately protects democratic values” (Kreiss, 2017, p. 452). The factors
causing the dilution of the modern press’ epistemic authority are both complicated
and diffuse (e.g., Waisbord, 2018). Having said that, there is reason to suspect that the
emergence of social and digital media infrastructures plays an especially critical role
in the promotion of alternative sources of epistemic authority. On one hand, the con-
nectivity (Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2011), information-acquisition (HerdaĞdelen,
Zuo, Gard-Murray, & Bar-Yam, 2013), and shareability (Oeldorf-Hirsch & Sundar,
2015) affordances of digital and social media allow non-institutional actors to create
and disseminate content that both bypasses traditional gatekeeping capabilities and
directly challenges the mainstream press’ epistemic authority. On the other hand,
digital and social networking platforms have—in a myriad of ways—also negatively
affected the business models that have, historically speaking, sustained professional
journalism (Usher & Carlson, 2018). It should, then, be no surprise that scholars have
repeatedly linked the current “post-truth” state of society to digital media platforms
generally and to social media platforms specifically (e.g., Hannan, 2018; Lazer et al.,
2018).
Below, we argue that the social media–based spread of false, biased, and/or
misleading political information is most likely to occur when such information is per-
ceived by audiences to be personally relevant and attitudinally consistent (e.g., Shin &
Thorson, 2017). First, however, we present and define the concept of countermedia,
which is central to this study.
Countermedia
Recently, scholars (e.g., Noppari, Hiltunen, & Ahva, 2019; Wasilewski, 2019;
Ylä-Anttila, 2018; Ylä-Anttila et al., 2019) have argued that information commonly
referred to as fake news in the popular and academic literatures may be better
understood as countermedia content. Numerous difficulties arise when seeking to
precisely conceptualize fake news as a social phenomenon. First, the word “fake”
connotes intentionality: a manifest attempt on the part of the message creator to
spread untrue information. This results in obvious issues, as it is often impossible to
objectively assess communicator intent. Second, the phrase “fake news” lends itself
to politicization (Lazer et al., 2018). Indeed, one recent study suggested that the
use of the phrase may hamper audiences’ ability to distinguish news content from
false political information (Van Duyn & Collier, 2018). Third, social and political
events are often subject to interpretation (Guess, Nagler, & Tucker, 2019). In many
Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 3

cases, it is difficult to establish specific criteria for what constitutes objectively false
information. Fourth, many websites that publish false political information also
“distort genuine news reports, and copy or repurpose content from other outlets” and
“selectively amplify political events in an over-the-top style that flatters the prejudices
of a candidate’s supporters” (Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2018, p. 4). Classifying all

content appearing on these sites as outright false is inaccurate and has led authors
such as Mourão and Robertson (2019, p. 1) to arrive at somewhat paradoxical
conclusions, such as “fake news is defined more by partisanship and identity politics
than misinformation and deception.” Other proposed labels also incur problems.
For instance, Wardle and Derakhshan (2017, p. 20) argued for the adoption of the
terms “misinformation” (“information that is false, but not created with the intention
of causing harm”) and “disinformation” (“information that is false and deliberately
created to harm a person, social group, organization or country”). Similarly, the
“mock news” label introduced by Ekström and Westlund (2019, p. 264) defines
content in terms of “imitating the tone and appearance of news material” while being
“comprised of intentionally fake content.” These terms again problematically rely
upon both an assumption of the motivations driving content creators (i.e., that there
exists an intent to inflict harm) and a presumption that the information is, indeed,
factually incorrect, rather than simply biased in tone, framing, or story selection.
In light of the foregoing conceptual issues that pertain to the articulation of
fake news, we adopt and adapt the term countermedia in this work. According to
Ylä-Anttila et al. (2019, p. 1), countermedia sites are “media outlets, but also tend
to explicitly oppose ‘the (mainstream) media,’ as well as the establishment more
generally (however ambiguously defined).” These sites produce informational con-
tent that combines “fact with fiction and rumors, sometimes intentionally blurring
the lines or spreading outright lies, most often by cherry-picking, coloring, and
framing information” (Ylä-Anttila, 2018, p. 357). Frequently, countermedia sites
adopt the tone and appearance of traditional news while simultaneously rejecting
the mainstream press’ normative values of objectivity and verifiability. According to
Noppari, Hiltunen, and Ahva (2019, p. 25), countermedia websites seek to “oppose,
challenge and offer alternatives to established media coverage and discussion within
specific areas.” In this way, countermedia sites provide counterknowledge, or “alter-
native knowledge which challenges establishment knowledge, replacing knowledge
authorities with new ones, thus providing an opportunity for political mobilization”
(Ylä-Anttila, 2018, p. 359). Importantly, some prior research has rightly pointed out
that disenfranchised groups can use alternative forms of non-mainstream journalistic
information to pursue goals related to inclusion and social justice. Ylä-Anttila et al.
(2019) addressed this tension point by arguing that countermedia can be distin-
guished from other (normatively and democratically positive) forms of alternative
media, because countermedia content seeks to inhibit, rather than enhance, core
democratic values, such as inclusion, veracity, and fairness.
Taken as a whole, then, the countermedia conceptualization encompasses outright
false information while also accounting for more frequently observed instances of

hyper-partisan information that can be contrasted with the normatively objective

knowledge produced by the mainstream press. In the below sections, we provide
further clarification on the countermedia concept by using extant research to describe
the typifying characteristics of countermedia content.

Ideological extremity as a countermedia attribute
Countermedia content is commonly ideologically extreme in nature. For instance, in
Narayanan et al.’s (2018, p. 2) attempt to classify “junk news sites” (broadly defined as
outlets that “deliberately publish misleading, deceptive or incorrect information pur-
porting to be real news about politics, economics or culture”), the authors identified
political bias as a key attribute, noting that “reporting in these outlets is highly biased
and ideologically skewed, which is otherwise described as hyper-partisan reporting.
These outlets frequently present opinion and commentary essays as news.” Likewise,
Allcott and Gentzkow (2017, p. 216) remarked that so-called fake news websites
produce content that very deliberately takes advantage of the “increasingly negative
feelings each side of the political spectrum holds toward the other.” Lewis and
Marwick (2017, p. 18) noted that ideologically extreme right-wing groups, such
as “White supremacists, men’s rights activists, 4chan and 8chan users, trolls, and
conspiracy theorists,” frequently used various forms of false political information in
the service of “redpilling,” or recruiting those with mainstream beliefs into extremist
spaces. Finally, Mourão and Robertson’s (2019) recent content analysis of popular
fake news sites found that approximately 55% of all articles contained some level
of partisanship and that around a quarter of all articles were either moderately or
extremely partisan in nature. Taken as a whole, this research suggests that counterme-
dia sites frequently produce hyper-partisan content that can be obviously contrasted
with the knowledge generated by the normatively non-partisan mainstream press.
Social mistrust as a countermedia attribute

In addition to producing ideologically extreme content, countermedia sites also
commonly feature content that capitalizes on and stokes feelings of social mistrust.
These sites commonly enforce a worldview comprised of two groups of people: those
in the know (a small group of people, such as readers of the site) and “sheeple”
(everyone else, and especially those who populate the dominant political sphere; e.g.,
Harambam & Aupers, 2014; Ylä-Anttila, 2018). The emphasis here is that most people
are either ignorant or operating with ulterior motives (Weinberg, 2019) and are,
therefore, unworthy of trust. For example, the prominent countermedia site Breitbart
is frequently and explicitly critical of a host of social groups, including racial/ethnic
minority groups, so-called social justice warriors, globalists, feminists, Muslims, and
a host of other types of people (e.g., Hylton, 2017). By thematically invoking feelings
of social mistrust, countermedia provide new forms of knowledge that are not based
upon factuality or verifiability. Instead, these sites construct knowledge within the
framework of individual and social identity attributes, effectively winnowing the
subset of trustable others to a select few.

Mistrust in the mainstream news media as a countermedia attribute

As sources of epistemic renderings that run counter to those found in the
mainstream press, countermedia sites simultaneously take advantage of and incur
further mistrust in the mainstream news media. Scholars frequently tie the rise
of fake news to collapsing levels of trust in the mainstream media (e.g., Allcott

& Gentzkow, 2017; Lewis & Marwick, 2017). Because countermedia sites offer
information that contradicts or modifies the reporting found in the mainstream
news media, it is specifically advantageous for them to hold an adversarial (and at
times, antagonistic) relationship with the mainstream press. For instance, Breitbart
regularly publishes instances of mainstream reporting that it excoriates as fake,
false, and/or intentionally misleading (in other words, assuming the self-appointed
role of mainstream-media watchdog). In this sense, countermedia often take on a
“corrective” character (Rojas, 2010), as they seek to address and correct the inade-
quate (and ultimately, untrustworthy) reporting proffered by the mainstream news
media.
Selective sharing of countermedia content

Countermedia dissemination is explicitly reliant upon the sharing behaviors of
individual users. Accordingly, understanding the individual attributes of those most
likely to share this content is critical to the comprehensive understanding of the
spread of democratically deleterious information online. Prior research by Noppari
et al. (2019, p. 28) linked the consumption of Finnish countermedia sites to audiences
that were societal outsiders who were often ideologically extreme, held feelings of
“social alienation,” and distrusted the mainstream generally and mainstream news
specifically. In this study, we extend these findings to the sharing of countermedia
content using Shin and Thorson’s (2017) concept of selective political information
sharing. Specifically, these authors argue that social media users are “likely to share
ideologically congenial information” (Shin & Thorson, 2017, p. 235), reasoning that
“sharing is fundamentally a social activity intended for or motivated by the imagined
audience” (Shin & Thorson, 2017, p. 236) and that sharing ideologically consonant
information helps mitigate states of negative dissonance incurred by the existence of
contradictory information, particularly as it pertains to one’s in-group. Other, similar
work on social media–based content sharing suggests that people may selectively
share attitudinally consonant content for a variety of different reasons linked to
personal relevancy, identity management, and personal influence (Bobkowski, 2015;
Liang, 2018). More broadly, this line of inquiry can be attached to research on infor-
mational utility, which shows that people tend to digitally share news information
that resonates with their own lives and is consistent with their political and social
worldviews (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015). Taken as a whole, the selective sharing
perspective indicates that people share information on social media that they agree
with and that they believe can make them look good to others, obtain/maintain social
status, and/or accomplish personal influence–linked goals.

One important aspect of the selective sharing perspective relates to social media’s
capacity to afford users with the ability to take corrective actions (Liang, 2018; Shin
& Thorson, 2017). Corrective actions are reactive behaviors that involve individual
actors “correcting” facts and narratives derived from the mainstream news media
that are perceived to be faulty, incorrect, incomplete, or biased (Rojas, 2010). These

behaviors commonly occur when an actor believes that some aspect of her or
his worldview or personal/social identity is under threat. The social connection,
information acquisition, and shareability affordances of social media facilitate the
performance of corrective actions because many barriers associated with tradi-
tional forms of participation are reduced or removed altogether (e.g., Barnidge &
Rojas, 2014).
In terms of partisan identity, there exists ample empirical support for the selective
sharing perspective. Shin and Thorson (2017, p. 233) found that Twitter-based
partisans selectively shared fact-check articles that “cheerlead their own candidate
and denigrate the opposing party’s candidate.” This finding is consistent with other
research showing that social media users tend to like and share content that con-
forms to their partisan beliefs (Colleoni, Rozza, & Arvidsson, 2014). Perhaps most
pertinent to the current study, studies on mainstream news sharing tend to show that
Democrats/liberals are more likely than Republicans/conservatives to post links to
news articles (e.g., Weeks & Holbert, 2013).
In this study, we build upon and extend the selective sharing approach to argue
that conformity between countermedia content and personal attributes will result in
a heightened likelihood of countermedia content sharing on social media. Notably,
we look beyond straightforward partisan factors and, instead, focus our energies on
other critical features of the political and social self. This line of inquiry is, we believe,
important, because partisan identification is an outcome itself linked to various
features of one’s traits, socialization, and worldviews (e.g., Capara, Barbaranelli, &
Zimbardo, 1999; Greene, 1999). It stands to reason that exploration of factors more
nuanced than one’s identification as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent may
yield a more precise rendering of the factors associated with online content sharing.
Moreover, countermedia content does not always neatly or absolutely conform to the
positions held by political parties (Noppari et al., 2019). In the below sections, we
build upon the notion of selective sharing to theorize that those who are ideologically
extreme, high in social mistrust, and high in news media mistrust will extract the
most informational utility from countermedia and, hence, will be the most likely to
share it on social media.
Ideological extremity and countermedia sharing

As an epistemic authority in the public sphere, the mainstream news media has
traditionally embraced deliberative values of good-faith compromise between those
with divergent—albeit legitimate—perspectives (Hallin, 1989). For this reason, the
mainstream press has tended to reflect an era-specific, centrist position (Schlesinger,
1990). Such an approach is obviously unattractive to those with politically extreme

beliefs, as those beliefs are implicitly understood as deviant by the mainstream

journalistic apparatus; it should, then, not be a surprise that research shows that those
with extreme political positions are unlikely to feel positive sentiment toward the
mainstream media (Hallin, 1989). Indeed, research into fake news consumption has
reliably indicated that individuals positioned at the extreme ends of the ideological

spectrum consume and share false political information at comparably higher rates
(e.g., Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Thompson, & Lazer, 2019; Guess et al., 2019;
Guess et al., 2018). Mourão and Robertson’s (2019) recent study indicated that fake
news articles featuring partisanship were most likely to be shared on both Facebook
and Twitter. Of note, this study found that a folded measure of partisan strength
better accounted for link sharing than directional measures of partisan identifi-
cation/valence. Based upon these findings, we theorize that ideologically extreme
social media users are unlikely to perceive the mainstream news as possessing
informational utility. Conversely, the sort of counterknowledge provided by the often
hyper-partisan countermedia does offer informational utility, resulting in the user
taking corrective action by selectively sharing countermedia content.
H1: Ideological extremity will be positively associated with sharing countermedia
content on social media.
Social mistrust and countermedia sharing

Normative approaches to political and civic participation suggest that commitment
to the dominant public sphere is conditioned upon the belief that a wide variety of
social others can be trusted and that these other actors share a mutual desire for social
progress and betterment (Brants, 2013). This perception permeates mainstream news
coverage, which has normatively adopted an approach which gives voice to multiple
sides of a given issue or news item (Schudson, 2001). In other words, mainstream
journalism tends to treat actors as good-faith entities. This can be contrasted with
countermedia content, which often coalesces around themes of mistrust in others
(Harambam & Aupers, 2014; Ylä-Anttila, 2018). For individuals with low levels of
social trust, it thus seems reasonable to propose that countermedia offers a great
deal of informational utility (especially in comparison to mainstream news content),
as it confirms their feelings that social others generally operate from a place of bad
faith and should be considered adversarial in nature. Sharing countermedia content
online, then, takes on a corrective form, as it can be used to signal that normative
presumptions of good faith (including those held by the mainstream media) are
faulty. Conversely, prior research on fake news verification behaviors suggests that
those with high levels of general social trust are likely to assemble online networks
comprised of diverse others. These networks lead to greater informational inflows,
which, ultimately, stimulate verification behaviors that hamper the spread of fake
news (Torres, Gerhart, & Negahban, 2018).
H2: Social trust will be negatively associated with sharing countermedia content
on social media.

Mistrust in the mainstream news and countermedia sharing

Trust in the mainstream media is a critical precursor to its use (Tsfati & Capella,
2003). Research has shown that those who do not trust the mainstream news obtain
information from other sources (Ardèvol-Abreu & Gil de Zúñiga, 2017). For those
who do not believe that the mainstream press is accurately reporting on important

social and political issues, the alternative renderings of reality offered by counter-
media sites should have enhanced information utility (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017).
Furthermore, posting countermedia content on social media allows for corrective
actions to be taken on a number of levels, as the promotion of these sources of
counterknowledge allows for questioning of both the facts and the institutions that
have historically been charged with disseminating facts (Noppari et al., 2019).
H3: Trust in the mainstream news media will be negatively associated with
sharing countermedia content on social media.
Implications for mainstream news sharing

The basic principle underlying the selective sharing perspective is that people share
content that provides personal and social benefits, and do not share content that
contradicts ideological, attitudinal, and or identity attributes (Shin & Thorson, 2017).
In this study, we have suggested that countermedia exists as an alternative form of
knowledge that directly challenges the authority of the traditional press. Building
on these two general propositions, H1–H3 stipulated that congruency between
countermedia content and social media user features should result in countermedia
content sharing being highest among the ideologically extreme, those with low social
trust, and those with low levels of trust in the mainstream media. If the foregoing
contentions are correct, it should, then, also be the case that the aforementioned vari-
ables are either unrelated or negatively associated (i.e., asymmetrical) with sharing
mainstream news content.
H4: The associations between mainstream news sharing and ideological extrem-
ity, social trust, and mainstream news trust should be comparatively asymmetri-
cal to the associations between countermedia sharing and ideological extremity,
social trust, and mainstream news trust.
Platform differences
In this work, we focus on Facebook and Twitter, two of the most popular social
media platforms in the United States for political discussion. It is possible—and
perhaps even probable—that countermedia sharing behaviors differ across social
media platforms. Research on fake news has shown that Facebook specifically serves
an especially important facilitator in the spread of fake news (Allcott & Gentzkow,
2017; Guess et al., 2019; Guess et al., 2018). Separately, cross-platform studies suggest
that social media sites have different technological and social capabilities, and that
these factors may, together, result in usage behaviors (e.g., Shane-Simpson, Manago,
& Gillespie-Lynch, 2018). However, while it may be likely that countermedia content

sharing behaviors differ across platforms, the research as it currently stands does not
provide enough information to form specific hypotheses pertaining to the degree
to which associations between the independent variables of primary interest and
countermedia content sharing may differ across Facebook and Twitter. Nonetheless,
the question is potentially important.

RQ1: Do associations between ideological extremity, social trust, and trust in
the mainstream news media and countermedia content sharing differ across
Facebook and Twitter?
Method
This study combined digital trace data collected on Facebook and Twitter with
self-report data obtained via a survey. Study recruitment was accomplished using
Qualtrics. Four sample controls were enforced: an approximate 50/50 gender split1 ;
a requirement that respondents be active users of both Facebook and Twitter2 ;
a requirement that respondents be current U.S. citizens; and a requirement that
respondents be 18 years or older. Given the exploratory nature of the current study,
we also requested in the recruitment that respondents talk about politics online at
least monthly. However, due to method-based limitations, this was not enforced as a
sample inclusion requirement.3
Before participating in the study, respondents were informed of the requirements
governing participation and provided with a consent form that articulated the
parameters of data collection. Regarding the collection of social media data,
respondents were told that social media messages “will be collected anonymously,
and at no time will the researchers know your identity, or the identities of your
friends. The data will solely be used to better understand how you share news
on social media.” Upon agreement to the terms of the study, respondents were
asked to authorize a custom application that was used to harvest their social media
data. After authorizing the application, respondents were piped into the survey
environment, which was hosted on Qualtrics’ servers. Self-report and social media
data were joined using an anonymous identification code that was assigned by
the web application. The following information was extracted from the Facebook
API: mobile_status_update, created_note, shared_story, created_event, wall_post,
app_created_story, and published_story. We did not capture newsfeed or friend
information. In the case of Twitter, only the content of posted tweets was retained.
In the cases of both Facebook and Twitter, our data extraction processes allowed us
to assess text and links posted by users. Our institutional review board approved all
study procedures. All data collection processes fully conformed with both platforms’
terms of service at the time of execution. Data collection occurred in the period
between 7 March 2017 and 6 June 2017. Social media data was downloaded on 6 June
2017. This means that the obtained social media data for each user was exhaustive
from their first post on the platform up until the harvest date.

Facebook and Twitter analytic samples

A total of 783 valid responses were collected.4 Two analytic subsamples were created
from the overall sample: a Facebook analytic sample and Twitter analytic sample. For
both platforms, we coded content that appeared between 1 August 2015 and 6 June
2017. This allowed us to assess content posted in the period before, during, and after

the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In each subsample, we deleted those cases whose
platform activity period began after 1 August 2015 to ensure that the study period
was consistent for all analyzed users. This resulted in the deletion of information
collected from 32 respondents from the Facebook sample (n = 751) and 184 cases
from the Twitter sample (n = 599). For the reported statistical analyses, we focused
on those that provided complete information on the self-report measures of interest,
resulting in a Facebook final analytic n of 678 and a Twitter final analytic n of 543. In
all, 525 respondents were in both the Facebook and Twitter analytic samples.5,6
Measures
Countermedia content sharing
Countermedia sharing frequency was assessed using a list-matching procedure. To
develop a comprehensive list of countermedia sites, we first generated a corpus of
domains by pooling lists of so-called fake news domains published by About.com,
Aloisius, CBS News, The Daily Dot, Fake News Watch, Fake News Checker, Melissa
Zimdars, NPR, Snopes Field Guide, The New Republic, and U.S. News and World
Report.7 We manually reviewed the final roster of sites to ensure that sites appearing
on our final list were predominantly focused on political and/or social events and
were not parody accounts (e.g., The Onion, Clickhole). To appear in our list, a site
had to appear on at least two of the identified fake news domain lists. In total,
we identified 106 countermedia websites. A Python script was used to extract all
social media posts that contained articles from the countermedia identified domains.
Content from a total of 62 domains was shared across both platforms (see Supporting
Information Appendix A for more details). To create the final sharing measure,
we summed the number of posts containing countermedia links for each user. In
the Facebook sample, a total of 1,152 countermedia content shares were identified.
The maximum number of pieces of content shared by a single user was 171. The
majority of respondents (71.1%) did not share any countermedia items. The overall
mean number of shares was 1.70 (SD = 8.54). Among the subsample of users who
shared at least one instance of countermedia, the mean number of shares was 5.88
(SD = 15.11). In the Twitter sample, 128 countermedia content shares were identified.
No user shared more than 33 countermedia content items. A large majority (95.0%)
of respondents did not share any countermedia content. The overall countermedia
sharing mean was 0.24 (SD = 1.94). Among those that shared at least one piece of
countermedia content, the mean number of shares was 4.74 (SD = 7.49). Density and
histogram plots showing the countermedia sharing distributions for both Facebook
and Twitter are provided in Supporting Information Appendix B.

Mainstream news content sharing

To measure the mainstream news content sharing frequency, we used Vargo and Guo’s
(2017) list of 1,914 “traditional” news sources. As was the case for countermedia
sharing, the final user-level measure was the total number of mainstream news shares
occurring between 1 August 2015 and 6 June 2017. A total of 7,468 mainstream news

shares were observed in the Facebook sample. In all, 512 participants (75.5%) shared
at least one mainstream news article (maximum number of observed shares = 456).
Across the sample, the mean number of shares was 11.01 (SD = 29.13). Among those
who shared at least one mainstream news article, the mean number of shares was
14.60 articles (SD = 32.75). Across the Twitter sample, a total of 4,229 mainstream
news shares from 156 respondents (28.7% of the sample) were recorded. The maxi-
mum number of observed shares for a single user was 2,750. Among those sharing
at least one content instance, the mean number of shares was 27.11 (SD = 22.59).
Density plots and histograms for the mainstream news sharing variables are provided
in Supporting Information Appendix B.
Ideological extremity
Ideological attitude extremity was measured by assessing participant conservatism
using three items, all on 7-point scales where higher scores indicated higher levels of
conservatism. These individual items were subsequently recoded into a 4-point scale
where those who selected options at the scale poles were assigned higher numbers
(i.e., a 1 or 7 was coded as a 4, a 2 or 6 was coded as 3, and so on) and collapsed into
a single measure (Facebook sample: M = 2.44, SD = 1.09, α = .95; Twitter sample:
M = 2.45, SD = 1.08, α = .94).
Social trust
Social trust was measured using six items (all on 7-point scales) that, together,
assessed the degree to which the respondent held reciprocal relationships with a
variety of social others, including friends, family members, and members of their
surrounding community. According to Fukuyama (1996), wide-ranging feelings of
mutuality and affinity can be understood as the end-product of those with high
levels of social trust. In this sense, our measure tapped into perceptions pertaining to
accumulated levels of social trust with a variety of others, which, as described above,
have been shown to be an integral part of participation in the public sphere (Facebook
sample: M = 5.29, SD = 1.12, α = .81; Twitter sample: M = 5.32, SD = 1.06, α = .79).
Mainstream news media trust

Trust in the mainstream news media was measured using eight items, all adapted
from Kohring and Matthes (2007). All items were on 7-point scales. The employed
mainstream news media trust scale taps four aspects of trust: trust in the media’s
selectivity of topics; trust in the media’s selectivity of facts; trust in the accuracy
of depictions found in the mainstream news media; and trust in the journalistic
assessments found in the mainstream news media. A single index was formed from

the individual items (Facebook sample: M = 4.07, SD = 1.39, α = .94; Twitter sample:
M = 4.05, SD = 1.39, α = .94).
Control measures

Control factors were divided into three broad categories: political factors, media use
factors, and demographic factors. Political interest was measured using four items,
all placed on 7-point scales where higher scores indicated higher levels of political
interest. To measure party identification, respondents were asked to select the option
that best represented their party affiliation. This measure was subsequently dummy
coded, with Democrat set as the reference group. Conservatism was measured using
the three measures discussed in the context of the political extremity measure. As
it pertained to media use factors, we asked respondents to indicate how often they:
actively sought out political content on social media; watched cable news; watched
network news; read the newspaper; and read political blogs. All items were placed on
7-point scales (1 = never and 7 = frequently). We also asked respondents to indicate
the degree to which they believed that posting political content on social media is
appropriate (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Platform usage intensity was
assessed by asking respondents how often they use Facebook and Twitter (1 = never
and 7 = frequently). Finally, we calculated the time period (in years) interrelating the
respondent’s first and most recent post as a measure of platform activity duration. For
demographics, the survey assessed respondents’ sex and age.
Complete wording for all measures (primary and control) is provided in Support-
ing Information Appendix C. Full descriptive statistics for all control variables are
reported in Supporting Information Appendix D.
Modeling approach
The distributions of the content sharing created some complications as they pertained
to the selection of appropriate modeling techniques. In the case of Twitter, the
exceptionally small number of cases with non-zero countermedia sharing counts
(n = 27) resulted in concerns related to power and our ability to identify a stable and
unbiased count model to describe the data. Accordingly, we used a logistic regression
model to assess the relationship between the countermedia identity markers and the
odds of sharing one or more countermedia content items on Twitter. In regard to
the mainstream news content sharing frequency, we again observed a relatively small
number of participants with non-zero counts (n = 156). Within this subsample, the
five most active users shared over 75% of all shared content. The relatively small
sample number of non-zero cases, combined with the presence of outlying cases,
again made it difficult to identify a trustworthy modeling approach for the count data;
as such, a binary logistic regression model was employed. In the case of Facebook,
we observed a comparatively greater number of cases with non-zero share counts
for both the countermedia (n = 196) and mainstream news (n = 512) variables. As
such, we were reasonably confident in our ability to model the positive counts in

an unbiased manner. Four plausible count modeling approaches were considered:

a Poisson model, a negative binomial model, a two-part Poisson logit hurdle model,
and a two-part negative binomial logit hurdle model (NBLH; for a full discussion of
these models, see Hilbe, 2014). Model fitness was determined empirically. Supporting
Information Appendix E provides further discussion of the considered modeling

approaches and describes the process used for model fit evaluation for these models.
A comparative model fit evaluation suggested that the NBLH approach was perhaps
best suited for the current data. NBLH models partition the overall model into two
components: (1) a binary (logistic) model that accounts for zero versus positive
counts; and (2) a truncated negative binomial model that addresses all positive counts
(Hilbe, 2014). For the Twitter models and the binary component of the Facebook
NBLH models, we provide both the logged odds (b) and odds ratios (ORs), the latter
of which reflect the odds of sharing one or more instances of countermedia content
relative to a one-unit increase in the non-criterion variable. For the negative binomial
component of the NBLH models, we provide the logged counts (b) and incidence
rate ratios (IRRs). The IRR coefficients can be interpreted as the rate of change in
countermedia content sharing, given a 1-unit increase in the independent variable
under consideration. In addition to the primary Facebook- and Twitter-based mod-
els, several additional models were generated. Specifically, there were several outlying
sharers of countermedia in the Facebook sample; an additional model without these
cases was estimated. Moreover, we estimated a model that looked at countermedia
content sharing frequency across both Facebook and Twitter, as we surmised that an
examination of this model would add additional context to our results.
Results
H1 suggested that ideological extremity would be positively related to countermedia

content sharing. As shown in Table 1, the logistic component of the Facebook
model indicated that ideological extremity was positively and statistically signifi-
cantly related to posting at least one instance of countermedia content on Facebook
(b = .34; SE = .10; p < .001; OR = 1.41). In the count model, the data indicated that ide-
ological extremity was positively and statistically significantly associated with the rate
at which countermedia content was shared on Facebook (b = .34; SE = .17; p = .044;
IRR = 1.41). However, in the Twitter model (see Table 2), we failed to observe a statis-
tically significant relationship between ideological extremity and the odds of sharing
one or more instances of countermedia (b = −.02; SE = .24; p = .929; OR = .98).
H2 suggested that social trust would be negatively associated with counterme-
dia content dissemination. In the binary component of the Facebook model, we
observed a negative relationship between social trust and countermedia content that
approached but did not meet the p < .05 criterion for statistical significance (b = −.16;
SE = .09; p = .095; OR = .85). A similar effect was observed in the count component
of the model (b = −.27; SE = .14; p = .065; IRR = .77). In the Twitter model, we
observed a statistically significant and negative relationship between social trust and

Table 1 Logistic and Count Components of Negative Binomial Logit Hurdle Predicting
Countermedia Content Sharing on Facebook
Logistic Component Count Component

b SE OR b SE IRR
Ideological extremity 0.34∗∗ 0.10 1.41 0.34∗ 0.17 1.41

Social trust −0.16† 0.09 0.85 −.27† 0.14 0.77
News media trust −0.27∗∗ 0.08 0.76 −0.04 0.10 0.96
Political interest 0.17 0.12 1.19 −0.02 0.19 0.98
Democrat (0)—Republican (1) contrast 0.26 0.32 1.30 −0.55 0.58 0.58
Democrat (0)—Independent (1) contrast 0.21 0.25 1.23 0.17 0.40 1.19
Democrat (0)—Other (1) contrast −0.10 0.52 0.90 1.27† 0.73 3.55
Ideological conservatism −0.11 0.07 0.90 0.12 0.11 1.12
Use SM for political information 0.07 0.07 1.08 0.02 0.11 1.02
Watch cable TV news 0.02 0.06 1.02 −0.06 0.09 0.94
Watch network TV news −0.09 0.07 0.91 0.03 0.10 1.03
Read newspapers (online or hardcopy) −0.05 0.06 0.95 −0.22∗ 0.09 0.80
Read political blogs 0.07 0.07 1.08 0.38∗∗ 0.11 1.46
Acceptable to talk about politics on SM 0.10 0.07 1.10 0.20† 0.12 1.22
Facebook usage intensity 0.44∗∗ 0.12 1.55 −0.38† 0.21 0.69
Facebook activity duration −0.02 0.05 0.98 0.00 0.08 1.00
Age 0.04∗∗ 0.01 1.04 0.08∗∗ 0.01 1.08
Sex (1 = female) −0.47∗ 0.20 0.63 0.13 0.28 1.14
LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 131.68, df = 18∗∗ χ 2 = 100.85, df = 18∗∗

McFadden R2 .16 .11
Notes: All variance inflation factors are below 2.75. IRR = incidence rate ratio; OR = odds ratio; SM = social media.
†p < .10; ∗ p < .05; ∗∗ p < .001.
sharing at least one instance of countermedia content (b = −.53; SE = .21; p = .011;

OR = .59).
H3 posited that there would be a negative relationship between trust in the
mainstream news media and countermedia content sharing on social media. In
the binary component of the Facebook model, a negative, statistically significant
relationship between trust in the mainstream news media and countermedia content
sharing was observed (b = −.27; SE = .08; p < .001; OR = .76). In the count component
of the model, however, the relationship between trust in the mainstream media and
countermedia content sharing was not significantly different than zero (b = −.04;
SE = .10; p = .672; IRR = .96). Looking next at the Twitter model, we failed to find a
significant relationship between trust in the mainstream news media and the odds of
sharing one or more instances of countermedia content (b = .04; SE = .17; p = .826;
OR = 1.04).8

Table 2 Logistic Regression Model Exploring Predicting Countermedia Content Sharing

on Twitter
b SE OR

Ideological extremity −0.02 0.24 0.98
Social trust −0.53∗ 0.21 0.59
News media trust 0.04 0.17 1.04
Political interest 0.03 0.27 1.03
Democrat (0)—Republican (1) contrast 0.51 0.73 1.67
Democrat (0)—Independent (1) contrast 0.53 0.62 1.70
Democrat (0)—Other (1) contrast 1.59† 0.91 4.89
Ideological conservatism 0.16 0.15 1.17
Use SM for political information 0.12 0.16 1.12
Watch cable TV news 0.08 0.14 1.08
Watch network TV news −0.36∗ 0.15 0.70
Read newspapers (online or hardcopy) 0.05 0.13 1.06
Read political blogs 0.19 0.15 1.21
Acceptable to talk about politics on SM 0.07 0.17 1.08
Twitter usage intensity 0.32∗ 0.15 1.38
Twitter activity duration 0.06 0.11 1.06
Age 0.07∗∗ 0.02 1.08
Sex (1 = female) −0.80 0.48 0.45
LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 52.77, df = 18∗∗

McFadden R2 .25
Note: All variance inflation factors are below 2.93. OR = odds ratio; SM = social media. †p < .10, ∗ p < .05; ∗∗ p < .001.
Notably, there were several outliers in the Facebook data. Specifically, three users
had high countermedia share counts (58, 95, and 172). To assess the degree to
which these cases affected our reported results, we removed them and re-estimated
the model. The results of the outlier-excluded model were essentially identical: in
the binary component of the model, we observed significant relationships between
sharing one or more countermedia content items and both ideological extremity
(b = .34; SE = .10; p < .001; OR = 1.41) and media trust (b = −.26; SE = .08; p < .001;
OR = .77), while the relationship between sharing at least one countermedia content
item and social trust was negative but not significant at the .05 level (b = −.16;
SE = .09; p = .096; OR = .86). In the count component of the model, we observed
a significant relationship between ideological extremity and countermedia sharing
frequency (b = .33; SE = .16; p = .035; IRR = 1.39). The relationships between sharing
frequency and both social trust (b = −.25; SE = .13; p = .062; IRR = .79) and trust in
the mainstream news media (b = .06; SE = .10; p = .578; IRR = 1.06) were, again, not
statistically significant.

An additional NBLH model was generated by combining share totals across

platforms. Included in this sample were those that had platform activity dates
beginning before 1 August 2015 for both platforms (n = 525). In the logistic model
component, a positive association between ideological extremity and sharing at least
one countermedia content item was observed (b = .35; SE = .12; p = .002; OR = 1.43).

A negative and statistically significant association was identified between sharing
at least one bit of countermedia content and trust in the media (b = −.24; SE
= .09; p = .002; OR = .79), while the association between countermedia sharing
and social trust was negative and non-significant in nature (b = −.20; SE = .11;
p = .083; OR = .82). In the count component of the model, social trust was negatively
associated with the countermedia sharing rate (b = −.42; SE = .19; p = .025; IRR = .66).
Neither ideological extremity (b = .28; SE = .19; p = .144; IRR = 1.32) nor trust in the
mainstream news media (b = .02; SE = .11; p = .888; IRR = 1.02) were significantly
related to the criterion variable.
H4 proposed that the independent variables specified in H1–H3 would be com-
paratively poor predictors of mainstream news sharing. In the Facebook-based model
(see Table 3), we failed to find evidence of statistically non-zero relationships between
the criterion variable and ideological extremity (b = .12; SE = .10; p = .259; OR = 1.12),
social trust (b = −.17; SE = .10; p = .081; OR = .85), and trust in the mainstream news
media (b = −.12; SE = .08; p = .138; OR = .89) in the logistic component. In the count
component of the Facebook model, ideological extremity was associated with the rate
at which mainstream news content was shared (b = .18; SE = .09; p = .049; IRR = 1.20).
However, neither social trust (b = −.07; SE = .09; p = .440; IRR = .93) nor trust in the
mainstream news (b = .01; SE = .07; p = .917; IRR = 1.01) were statistically associated
with the rate of sharing mainstream news articles. Within the Twitter sample (see
Table 4), none of the identified independent variables were significantly associated
with mainstream news sharing. Specifically, null relationships were observed between
mainstream news content sharing and ideological extremity (b = .16; SE = .11;
p = .127; OR = 1.18), social trust (b = −.14; SE = .10; p = .176; OR = .87), and trust in
the mainstream news media (b = .06; SE = .08; p = .442; OR = 1.07).
Follow-up analysis
Studies on fake news have generally shown that those self-identifying as very
conservative share the most fake news (Grinberg et al., 2019; Guess et al., 2019; Guess
et al., 2018). However, in our study, we failed to find significant relationships between
countermedia sharing and conservatism in either the Facebook or Twitter models
(Tables 1 and 2). A similar set of results was observed in relation to identification
as a Republican. To further explore this potential discrepancy with extant literature,
we rounded the conservatism measure to the nearest whole number and examined
the summed number of countermedia content shares across the scale range. In the
Facebook sample, those scoring a 7 on the conservatism scale accounted for 25.6%
of all countermedia shares, which was the highest per-category percentage observed.
In the Twitter sample, those scoring a 7 on the conservatism measure accounted

Table 3 Logistic and Count Components of Negative Binomial Logit Hurdle Model Predict-
ing Mainstream News Content Sharing on Facebook
Logistic Component Count Component

b SE OR b SE IRR
Ideological extremity 0.12 0.10 1.12 0.18∗ 0.09 1.20

Social trust −0.17† 0.10 0.85 −0.07 0.09 0.93
News media trust −0.12 0.08 0.89 0.01 0.07 1.01
Political interest 0.07 0.11 1.07 0.03 0.09 1.04
Democrat (0)—Republican (1) contrast −0.30 0.31 0.74 −0.12 0.29 0.89
Democrat (0)—Independent (1) contrast −0.10 0.24 0.91 0.15 0.23 1.16
Democrat (0)—Other (1) contrast 0.86 0.66 2.37 −0.33 0.39 0.72
Ideological conservatism 0.09 0.07 1.10 −0.07 0.06 0.93
Use SM for political information 0.02 0.08 1.02 0.14∗ 0.06 1.15
Watch cable TV news −0.09 0.07 0.92 −0.06 0.05 0.94
Watch network TV news −0.06 0.07 0.94 −0.11∗ 0.05 0.89
Read newspapers (online or hardcopy) 0.08 0.06 1.08 0.05 0.05 1.05
Read political blogs 0.03 0.08 1.03 0.03 0.06 1.03
Acceptable to talk about politics on SM 0.13† 0.07 1.14 0.09 0.06 1.10
Facebook usage intensity 0.42∗∗∗ 0.08 1.53 0.37∗∗∗ 0.09 1.45
Facebook activity duration 0.16∗∗ 0.05 1.17 0.08∗ 0.04 1.09
Age 0.01† 0.01 1.01 0.02∗∗ 0.01 1.02
Sex (1 = female) 0.64∗∗ 0.20 1.89 −0.12 0.17 0.89
LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 78.67, df = 18 ∗∗∗ χ 2 = 82.60, df = 18 ∗∗∗

McFadden R2 .10 .02
Notes: All variance inflation factors are below 2.75. IRR = incidence rate ratio; OR = odds ratio; SM = social media.
†p < .10, ∗ p < .05, ∗∗ p < .01, ∗∗∗ p < .001.
for 32.0% of all countermedia shares, again accounting for the highest per-category
share percentage. That said, those self-identifying as very liberal (i.e., conservatism
score = 1) also shared substantial amounts of countermedia in both samples: 17.5%
on Facebook and 16.4% on Twitter. In the Facebook sample, those scoring at the
extreme ends of the ideological spectrum shared 43.4% of all countermedia shares,
despite the fact that these categories only represented 22.9% of the analytic sample.
On Twitter, this pattern was nearly identical: 22.8% of the sample was responsible for
48.4% of all countermedia shares.
Results summary
H1 suggested that ideological extremity would be positively related to sharing coun-
termedia on social media. This hypothesis was partially supported, as we observed
positive and statistically significant coefficients for both the binary and count compo-

Table 4 Logistic Regression Model Predicting Mainstream News Content Sharing on Twitter
b SE OR
Ideological extremity 0.16 0.11 1.18

Social trust −0.14 0.10 0.87
News media trust 0.06 0.08 1.07
Political interest 0.00 0.12 1.00
Democrat (0)—Republican (1) contrast 0.31 0.33 1.36
Democrat (0)—Independent (1) contrast −0.06 0.26 0.94
Democrat (0)—Other (1) contrast 0.09 0.56 1.09
Ideological conservatism −0.08 0.07 0.92
Use SM for political information 0.09 0.08 1.10
Watch cable TV news −0.04 0.07 0.96
Watch network TV news −0.12 0.08 0.89
Read newspapers (online or hardcopy) 0.10† 0.06 1.11
Read political blogs −0.04 0.07 0.96
Acceptable to talk about politics on SM 0.05 0.08 1.05
Twitter usage intensity 0.30∗∗ 0.07 1.35
Twitter activity duration −0.09† 0.05 0.91
Age 0.02∗ 0.01 1.02
Sex (1 = female) 0.06 0.21 1.06
LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 92.56, df = 18∗∗

McFadden R2 .08
Notes: All variance inflation factors are below 2.93. OR = odds ratio; SM = social media. †p < .10; ∗ p < .01; ∗∗ p < .001.
nents of the Facebook model and a non-significant coefficient in the Twitter model.
H2 predicted that social trust would be negatively associated with countermedia
content sharing. This hypothesis was partially supported. In the Twitter model,
a negative and statistically significant coefficient was observed. However, in the
Facebook model, the association between social trust and content sharing was not sta-
tistically significant in either the binary or rate components. H3 predicted a negative
relationship between trust in the mainstream media and countermedia sharing. This
hypothesis was, again, partially supported. In the Facebook models, a statistically sig-
nificant and negative association was observed in the logistic component. However,
in the rate component and in the Twitter model, this association was not statistically
different from zero. H4 suggested that the variables of primary interest in the
countermedia models would be comparatively poor predictors of mainstream news
sharing. This hypothesis was broadly supported; looking at both the Facebook and
Twitter models, only one parameter estimate of interest was statistically associated
with mainstream news sharing (ideological extremity was negatively associated with
countermedia content sharing in the rate component of the Facebook model). The

research question was interested in looking at cross-platform differences in regard

to countermedia content sharing. The results generally indicated that Facebook was
much more heavily used for countermedia content sharing and that the variables of
primary interest were more consistently related to sharing outcomes on Facebook.
Finally, a follow-up analysis generally conformed with prior research by showing that

strong conservatives were the most likely to share countermedia content; having said
that, however, we found that a substantial number of those that identified as strongly
liberal were also frequent sharers of countermedia content.
Discussion
A handful of potentially important insights flow from our findings. First, we believe
that our conceptualization of countermedia may be helpful for future research.
Fake news, as a meaningful descriptor of real-world phenomena, is fraught with
issues. Suggested alternatives, such as misinformation and disinformation, require
frequently unknowable knowledge of communicator motives. Countermedia, in con-
trast, neither invokes potentially problematic frames (e.g., the implication that fake
news is a form of “news”) nor requires knowledge of the motivations spurring content
creators. Instead, this concept speaks to the observable epistemic functionality of
communicated content. While the concept certainly needs future refinement, we
believe it serves as an important step towards a more nuanced handling of so-called
fake news.
Second, our focus on the relationship between content sharing and granular,
individual-level political and social factors is noteworthy. The approach used in this
study can be contrasted with other quantitative-empirical studies on the topic, which
have predominantly focused on the demographic patterns underlying democratically
deviant information dissemination (e.g., Grinberg et al., 2019). These studies are
useful and important, but do not directly speak to the nuances of social and political
self. Broadly speaking, the demographic patterns observed in relation to counter-
media sharing were consistent with those observed in recent, large-scale studies
using representative samples to probe fake news sharing (Grinberg et al., 2019; Guess
et al., 2019), particularly as it relates to countermedia sharing and age. At the same
time, our results suggest that a comprehensive understanding of the dissemination
of false, misleading, biased, and hyper-partisan content requires looking beyond
demographic features and party identification and into the sometimes-complex
aspects (e.g., personality traits, socialization factors, cognitive needs) of the political
self. Therein, it should be noted that the independent variables of central interest did a
generally poor job of predicting the rate at which countermedia content was shared in
the Facebook model. Specifically, of these three variables, only ideological extremity
was significant in both the count and rate components of the model. This suggests—
as perhaps is to be expected in light of prior work on countermedia and related forms
of information sharing (Grinberg et al., 2019; Guess et al., 2019)—that ideological
sentiment may play an especially important role in the countermedia identity. More

generally, the poor performance of the independent variables of interest suggests

that countermedia content may play an establishing, rather than reinforcing, role in
online self-articulation.
Third, the present findings have implications for theorization on selective sharing.
In its original articulation, Shin and Thorson (2017) focused somewhat narrowly

on partisan, selective sharing. The rationale here was that social media–based con-
tent sharing is a “fundamentally social activity” (Shin & Thorson, 2017, p. 236)
that is largely activated by group-based cues (e.g., party identification) that, when
combined with dissonance reduction needs and the corrective potential of social
media, ultimately elicit behaviors aimed at protection or enhancement of one’s in-
group. While, to a certain extent, ideological extremity, social trust, and trust in the
mainstream news media all speak to activation of an “us versus them” mentality,
they also (and perhaps more directly) speak to factors of the self as a political and
social agent. Such consideration may be especially salient in the current context,
given our inability to identify statistical associations between party identification
and either mainstream or countermedia sharing. In this way, our results suggest
that selective sharing may be differentially linked to social and personal identity
cues on a contextual basis. In some cases, people may be motivated to share content
that protects or enhances their perceived in-group. In other cases, people may share
information because it articulates something important about their personal identity
or allows them to exert and/or maintain personal influence over others. In both
instances, the general mechanics are the same: (a) consumed media content that is
both attitudinally consistent and is deemed to possess high informational, personal,
or social utility is (b) shared with one’s social media followers as (c) an externally
facing corrective means of presenting some aspect of one’s self to others.
Fourth, the fact that the independent variables of primary interest served as rela-
tively poor predictors of mainstream news sharing is notable. In this study, we argued
that countermedia attempt to counter the knowledge produced by the mainstream
press. Therein, we drew upon extant research that suggests people are unlikely to
share content on social media that they disagree with (Shin & Thorson, 2017). The
contextually asymmetric nature of the coefficients for ideological extremity, social
trust, and trust in the mainstream press provide tentative support for this line of
theorization. At the same time, caution should be applied when interpreting these
findings. Many of the coefficient signs in the mainstream sharing modes were in
same direction (albeit comparatively weak and non-significant in nature). And, more
generally, null effects should not be over-interpreted (e.g., Leppink, O’Sullivan, &
Winston, 2017).
Fifth, we observed substantial disparities in countermedia sharing frequencies
across platforms. On Facebook, a total of 1,152 bits of countermedia were shared,
while on Twitter, only 128 countermedia share instances were detected. In the case
of the Facebook sample, one outlying user shared more content (172 instances) than
all analyzed cases in the Twitter sample. This finding comports with recent research
(Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Guess et al., 2019; Guess et al., 2018), which shows that

Facebook is a central conduit for the transfer of fake news. One interpretation of
this frequency-based disparity may be linked to platform-specific affordances. Due
to a combination of service policies (e.g., the so-called “real name policy”; Facebook,
2019), widespread diffusion, “group” spaces, and normative social application, Face-
book may be understood as transmitting a more voluminous amount of personal

and identity-linked information than many other social media platforms, including
Twitter (Cho & Acquisti, 2013). Although prior research on identity performance in
computer-mediated contexts is not conclusive on the subject, there is some indication
that “rich interactions (i.e., interactions that allow the transmission of cues to identity
such as face-to-face) are superior in that they make the interaction more personal”
(Tanis & Postmes, 2007, p. 955). It may, therefore, be the case that for some purposes
and in some contexts, Facebook simply offers a fuller, richer, and more immediately
personalized means of task accomplishment. This conclusion may also explain—
at least partially—why we observed different patterns of association between the
independent variables of primary interest and countermedia sharing frequencies
across platforms. If it is indeed the case that Facebook possesses greater identity-
building potential (e.g., Cho & Acquisti, 2013) and that belief strength is an important
part of political and social identity (e.g., Westfall, Van Boven, & Chambers, 2015),
it follows that ideological extremity may be an especially important correlate of
countermedia sharing on Facebook. Alternately, scholars have previously remarked
that the de-identified nature of Twitter opens the platform up to increased levels of
trolling and other, related forms of anti-social behavior (e.g., Oz, Zheng, & Chen,
2018). It may, therefore, be the case that social mistrust plays a disproportionally
important role in political communication on Twitter. For its part, countermedia
content often speaks to feelings of “social alienation” (Noppari et al., 2019, p. 28).
Considered together, these two propositions provide a potential explanation for the
differentially strong relationship between social mistrust and countermedia sharing
on Twitter observed in this study.
This study is subject to limitations. Although we approached the issue of counter-
media dissemination from a deductive standpoint, this study is one of the first of its
kind and, thus, should be considered exploratory in nature. Relatedly, we recognize
that, for some readers, our normatively negative handling of the term countermedia
may inadvertently invoke reference to other forms of normatively positive alternative
media. Additionally, in terms of independent variables, we focused on a relatively
small number of factors. There may be other features (e.g., news literacy) that may
also be associated with countermedia dissemination on social media. Relatedly, our
measure of social trust simply asked respondents to provide a summary of their
bonded and bridged social ties. Other measures may have yielded different results.
Additionally, our data collection approach, which combined survey and trace data,
may have incurred a systematic sampling bias due to issues related to data privacy
perceptions. The degree to which this may or may not affect our results is unknown.
Also, the sample employed in this study is not representative of the general population
of users on Facebook and Twitter or of the United States as a whole. Another

limitation pertains to our use of a domain-level, list-based approach for content

identification. Finally, drawing from the selective sharing approach (Shin & Thorson,
2017), this study assumed that people share content because it is attitudinally consis-
tent and personally relevant. In some cases, however, people may share information
that is attitudinally inconsistent as a means of expressing disagreement, expressing

humor, or starting a conversation. Because we did not analyze user-generated text
that may have accompanied posted links, we were not able to empirically evaluate the
degree to which the sampled respondents may have shared attitudinally inconsistent
countermedia content.
To conclude, we believe that our theorizing and empirical work together provide
valuable insights into the spread of ideologically extreme and often untrue political
information on social media. Future work should build on these findings by repli-
cating them in a larger, more representative sample. Efforts should also be taken
to identify other potentially influential, individual-level factors that are associated
with the spread of false, biased, and hyper-partisan political information online (e.g.,
news literacy, cognitive styles, political self-efficacy). It is also important that future
research clarifies and refines the concept of countermedia, as we believe that such an
approach offers great theoretical potential and is, perhaps, both a more nuanced and
accurate means of understanding so-called fake news.
Supporting Information
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.
Please note: Oxford University Press is not responsible for the content or functionality
of any supplementary materials supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than
missing material) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
Notes
1 We instituted an approximate 50/50 sex split because our prior work with
Qualtrics has shown us that samples without quotas can result in pronounced
sex imbalances.
2 As it pertains to the active user criteria, we required that all users have a current
account with at least 50 pieces of posted content on both platforms. This safeguard
was put in place to avoid scenarios where a user may create an account simply to
qualify for the study.
3 When constructing the recruitment language, our goal was to ensure that partici-
pants were interested in politics generally, as a sample comprised predominantly of
politically ambivalent citizens would be of limited theoretical or practical interest.
Self-report data indicated that the sample (and accompanying sub-samples) were
comprised of politically interested and engaged citizens: the sample average on
the political interest scale (range, 1–7) was 5.27 (SD = 1.44). In all, 87.2% of

respondents had a political interest score equal to or above the composite scale
center point of 4.00.
4 Of those respondents that engaged with the study materials, 13.5% both met our
inclusion criteria and provided valid survey responses.
5 Little’s Missing Completely at Random (MCAR; Little, 1988) test was used to

assess the degree to which missing data in both the Facebook and Twitter samples
were random in nature. Tests applied to the Facebook (χ 2 = 306.79; df = 314;
p = .604) and Twitter samples (χ 2 = 286.23; df = 276; p = .323) were non-
significant, suggesting that the data were MCAR.
6 All reported descriptive statistics are also derived from the final analytic samples
(Facebook, n = 678; Twitter, n = 543).
7 Notably, many of these lists have been criticized for containing media sites that
publish distorted, hyper-partisan, or ideologically extreme content rather than
outright false information (e.g., Owen, 2017). This criticism, as illustrated above,
was one motivating factor in our conceptualization of countermedia.
8 Given the very small number of countermedia shares in the Twitter sample, we
estimated an additional logistic regression model that only included the three
predictors of primary interest. Additionally, a Firth correction was applied to
address potential issues associated with event rarity. In this model, non-significant
parameter estimates were observed for ideological extremity and news media
trust. The relationship between countermedia sharing status and social trust was
negative and statistically significant. Given that both the larger, covariate-based
model (reported in Table 2) and the smaller, Firth-corrected model resulted in
identical conclusions, we substantively reported the former for the purposes of
facilitating comparison between the Twitter and Facebook samples.
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Human Communication Research ISSN 0360–3989

Why Do People Share Ideologically Extreme,

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In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, then-President

Corresponding author: Toby Hopp; e-mail: tobias.hopp@colorado.edu

sensationalized political information (e.g., Ohlheiser, 2016). Somewhat distressingly,

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The mainstream news media as an epistemic authority

2 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

Presently, however, the mainstream press’ capacity to serve as an epistemic author-

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Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 3

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4 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

hyper-partisan information that can be contrasted with the normatively objective

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Social mistrust as a countermedia attribute

Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 5

Mistrust in the mainstream news media as a countermedia attribute

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Selective sharing of countermedia content

6 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

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Ideological extremity and countermedia sharing

Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 7

beliefs, as those beliefs are implicitly understood as deviant by the mainstream

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Social mistrust and countermedia sharing

8 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

Mistrust in the mainstream news and countermedia sharing

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Implications for mainstream news sharing

Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 9

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10 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

Facebook and Twitter analytic samples

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Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 11

Mainstream news content sharing

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Mainstream news media trust

12 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

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Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 13

an unbiased manner. Four plausible count modeling approaches were considered:

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H1 suggested that ideological extremity would be positively related to countermedia

14 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

Logistic Component Count Component

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Ideological extremity 0.34∗∗ 0.10 1.41 0.34∗ 0.17 1.41

LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 131.68, df = 18∗∗ χ 2 = 100.85, df = 18∗∗

sharing at least one instance of countermedia content (b = −.53; SE = .21; p = .011;

Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28 15

Table 2 Logistic Regression Model Exploring Predicting Countermedia Content Sharing

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LogLikelihood ratio χ 2 = 52.77, df = 18∗∗

16 Human Communication Research 00 (2020) 1–28

An additional NBLH model was generated by combining share totals across