Where ‘fake news’ flourishes: a comparison across four Western democracies

ABSTRACT

How does the content of so-called ‘fake news’ differ across Western democracies? While previous research on online disinformation has focused on the individual level, the current study aims to shed light on cross-national differences. It compares online disinformation re-published by fact checkers from four Western democracies (the US, the UK, Germany, and Austria). The findings reveal significant differences between English-speaking and German-speaking countries. In the US and the UK, the largest shares of partisan disinformation are found, while in Germany and Austria sensationalist stories prevail. Moreover, in English-speaking countries, disinformation frequently attacks political actors, whereas in German-speaking countries, immigrants are most frequently targeted. Across all of the countries, topics of false stories strongly mirror national news agendas. Based on these results, the paper argues that online disinformation is not only a technology-driven phenomenon but also shaped by national information environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Disinformation
• polarization
• partisanship
• international comparison
• content analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Edda Humprecht is a senior research and teaching associate at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1 Google News in the most widely used news aggregator in Europe as well as in the US (Newman et al., 2017).