Articles About Fake News Increased After Trump Election: Trend Analysis

In November 2016 we see an explosion in articles. There were over 10,000 articles published about Fake News in November 2016 rising to 19,000 articles in December 2016.

Google Searches for “Fake News”

The increase in Fake News articles appears to coincide with a jump in interest in the topic from November 2016 as measured by the Google search volumes seen below.

Social Engagement with Articles about Fake News

In terms of social engagements (shares, likes and comments) with articles about Fake News we can see a very significant increase in November 2016.

This surge of interest in the concept of ‘Fake News’ from politicians, journalists, regulators and the public has led to over 200,000 articles being published about the topic and these have gained over 79m social engagements so far.

Was It Predictable?

One of the superpowers that all journalists and marketers would love to have is being able to predict popular trends. When we look back at Fake News content, we can see some early signs that it was about to become a major issue. It can be argued that if Trump had not been elected in 2016 there would not have been such an explosion in stories about Fake News, but there were signs that it was about to become a matter of significant interest.

The number of articles in the run up to the election may have been small but they were rising and so was the social engagement, Below we have broken out these articles along with the level of social engagement.

In August there were 238 articles published about Fake News and one article by the Washington Post about Fake News trending on Facebook. It gained over 13,000 social engagements. In September there were 297 articles published about Fake News. The most shared article this month was how Facebook and Twitter were aiming to combat Fake News, this post gained over 21,000 social engagements

By October 2016 the number of articles published about Fake News grew to 442. The level of social engagement was also rising sharply. The top post by CNN on ‘the plague of Fake News’ and ‘how to protect yourself’ gained over 127,000 social engagements.

It would have been difficult to predict the extent of the explosion in articles about fake news in November but as we can see interest in the topic was growing. The number of articles being published was increasing and there was sharp increase in social engagement with those articles.

In December 2016 there were over 19,000 articles published about fake news (remember that’s compared to 238 in August) and some of these gained very high levels of social engagement. The post which received the most engagement was this post by NPR on how to self-check facts, with over 420,000 engagements. There’s no doubt that mainstream news sources covering the topic helped with its virality.

Fake news continues to generate interest and social engagement. In February 2018 the Independent’s coverage of a University of Oxford study showing that Trump supporters share proportionally more fake news stories gained over 120,000 social engagements (many of which were no doubt negative responses from Trump supporters).

See Most Shared Articles About Fake News

6 True Lessons From The Fake News Story

As we said, if we or anyone else could have predicted this explosion, we would probably have written this article last September. It’s difficult to spot emerging trends in content, but here are some takeaways and tips for content marketers and publishers next time there’s a wave forming offshore that you want to ride:

1. Track speed of social engagement: The true story is not just about the volume of articles published on fake news. It’s how quickly the early stories built social engagement. This is a good indicator of how the topic is resonating with the audience. You can use tools like BuzzSumo to track how engagement is increasing. You can track specific networks and track both total and average social engagement.
2. Track the relevant trigger events. Each topic tends to have a trigger event which causes a surge in interest and in articles. In politics these events are typically elections. In the case of topics such as Bitcoin it is the price. Interest in Bitcoin as measured by articles and social engagement closely follows the price of the cryptocurrency as we can see below.