Lasser Jana, Aroyehun Segun Taofeek, Simchon Almog, Carrella Fabio, Garcia David, Lewandowsky Stephan
Institute for Interactive Systems and Data Science, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 16C, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstädterstraße 39, 1080 Vienna, Austria.
PNAS Nexus. 2022 Sep 22;1(4):pgac186. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac186.
Increased sharing of untrustworthy information on social media platforms is one of the main challenges of our modern information society. Because information disseminated by political elites is known to shape citizen and media discourse, it is particularly important to examine the quality of information shared by politicians. Here, we show that from 2016 onward, members of the Republican Party in the US Congress have been increasingly sharing links to untrustworthy sources. The proportion of untrustworthy information posted by Republicans versus Democrats is diverging at an accelerating rate, and this divergence has worsened since President Biden was elected. This divergence between parties seems to be unique to the United States as it cannot be observed in other western democracies such as Germany and the United Kingdom, where left-right disparities are smaller and have remained largely constant.
社交媒体平台上不可信信息的分享增加是我们现代信息社会的主要挑战之一。由于政治精英传播的信息已知会塑造公民和媒体话语，因此审视政治家分享的信息质量尤为重要。在此，我们表明自2016年起，美国国会中的共和党成员越来越多地分享指向不可信来源的链接。共和党人与民主党人发布的不可信信息比例正以加速的速度分化，自拜登总统当选以来，这种分化加剧。政党之间的这种分化似乎是美国独有的，因为在德国和英国等其他西方民主国家并未观察到这种情况，在这些国家，左右翼差异较小且基本保持不变。
