Baptist News Global
A new report debunks conservatives’ claims that social media companies routinely censor conservative accounts and perspectives.
The study by nonprofit Media Matters for America discovered that right-leaning internet pages generated more interactions than left-leaning or politically nonaligned pages from Jan. 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2022.
“For years, conservatives have falsely claimed they’re being censored on Facebook and other mainstream media platforms. While some have migrated to alternative right-wing platforms that promise the ability to post with essentially no concern for user safety, many have continued to regularly post on Facebook,” researchers explained in the June 12 report. “What some on the right decry as censorship is in most cases just private companies enforcing the community guidelines users agree to when joining these platforms. Mainstream platforms have, in fact, repeatedly caved to bogus right-wing pressure and bent their rules in ways that favor conservatives.”
Data show conservative Facebook pages generated more than three times the number of interactions per post than other pages in 2022, while half of the top 10 pages were those of right-leaning groups during the three-year period of the study. Only two of the top 10 were liberal or progressive sites.
“During the three-year period, six of the top 10 posts that earned the most interactions are from right-leaning pages — five of those are from pages affiliated with right-wing media outlet The Epoch Times,” the study notes.
The study also found Donald Trump to be a force on social media despite being banned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“On January 25 of this year (2023), Meta announced that it would be ending Trump’s suspension, and on March 17 Trump posted on Facebook for the first time since regaining access to his account. In other words, Trump was unable to post on Facebook for most of 2021 and all of 2022. Even so, his page still earned the fourth most total interactions of all pages studied over the three-year time frame.”
The former president’s Facebook presence has been strengthened by a web of conservative social media networks that boosted his posts and other content, Media Matters said. “This includes the Making Web Network, which Slate described in 2018 as ‘part of a cottage industry of highly engaged Donald Trump fan pages that know how to get more likes, shares and clicks than many of the traditional news outlets against which they compete for Facebook users’ attention.’”
Trump’s 852 million interactions on 6,000 posts placed him among the five right-wing pages listed in overall top 10 during the period of study. He was joined by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro (nearly 894 million interactions, 104 million posts), Fox News (876 million interactions, 59,000 posts), Breitbart (600 million interactions, 57,000 posts) and political commentator Dan Bongino (534 million interactions, 23,000 posts).
Media Matters added that while the conservative Newsmax did not rank in the top 10 throughout the three-year span of the study, it did achieve that ranking in 2021 and 22.
“The page that earned the most interactions over the three-year period was Occupy Democrats, a left-leaning page which earned over 1 billion total interactions on nearly 53,000 posts. The only other left-leaning page in the top 10 was The Other 98%, which earned more than 664 million total interactions on about 23,000 posts.”
The study underscored the ability of conservative pages to generate more interactions on fewer posts than those created by nonaligned and progressive groups.
Ideologically nonaligned groups in the top 10 included CNN (437 million interactions, nearly 58,000 posts), People magazine (336 million interactions, nearly 79,000 posts), and ABC News (nearly 336 million interactions, more than 103,000 posts), the study reported.
Media Matters used CrowdTangle, a social network analysis tool, to compile and review data from Facebook pages focused on politics.
“Of the nearly 29 million posts reviewed in the study, about 20.4 million (71%) were shared by ideologically nonaligned pages, 5.5 million (19%) were shared by right-leaning pages, and 2.9 million (10%) were shared by left-leaning pages. Of the nearly 37 billion total interactions earned on these posts, right-leaning pages earned nearly 16 billion (42%), while nonaligned pages earned over 12 billion (33%) and left-leaning pages earned over 9 billion (25%).”
The study underscored the ability of conservative pages to generate more interactions on fewer posts than those created by nonaligned and progressive groups.
“Right-leaning pages earned roughly 10% more total interactions than nonaligned pages in 2020, and roughly 15% more in 2021. In 2022 — the only year when nonaligned pages earned the most total interactions — they pulled ahead of right-leaning pages by just 2%.”
But the right still came out ahead on social media that year. “In fact, right-leaning pages still earned more average interactions per post than ideologically nonaligned pages that year, with nonaligned pages earning just over 420 average interactions per post, or less than a third of the roughly 1,520 average interactions per post earned by the right-leaning pages.”
Jeff Brumley
Jeff Brumley is Senior News Writer for Baptist News Global. A veteran newspaper reporter, he lives in Jacksonville, Fla., with his dog, Nosey.