The Effect of Facebook Service Availability on Misinformation Search Behavior

• In Event: Misinformation, Political Polarization and Health Behaviors

Abstract

Pundits and public health experts alike suspect that Facebook plays a role in not only exposing Americans to politically-relevant public health misinformation, but potentially encouraging them to seek out misinformation from other sources. Whether or not Facebook is responsible for stimulating misinformation consumption beyond the social networking site, however, is an open question. If Facebook indeed stimulates pandemic misinformation search behavior, we might expect search volume on other websites to simultaneously decrease when web traffic to Facebook is comparatively low. Here, we exploit a naturally occurring and exogenous interruption to Facebook's service to study the site's impact on misinformation search. Difference-in-difference analyses reveal that minute-by-minute Google searches for politically contentious pandemic misinformation (e.g., unproven COVID-19 remedies, vaccine conspiracy theories) tended to increase during the outage period, in comparison to a typical day (and vs. a placebo). These findings are less consistent with views that the site stimulates misinformation search, and more consistent with a steady and transferrable demand for pandemic misinformation. We conclude by discussing the implications of Americans' demand for health misinformation -- and Facebook's potential role in shaping it -- for political and health communication efforts to encourage evidence-based health behavior.

Authors

• Matt Motta, Boston University School of Public Health

• Dominik Andrzej Stecula, Colorado State University