Anti-Burnham fake news on Makerfield Facebook accounts has surged, report finds – UK politics live

Nearly one in six pieces of news shared in local Facebook groups during the campaign is false, Social Market Foundation report finds

Good morning. Andy Burnham seems to be on course to win the Makerfield byelection on Thursday. But, if he does win, it will be despite a huge increase in the amount of hostile, fake news about him circulating on local Facebook groups. This has been documented in a report out today by the Social Market Foundation thinktank that has important implications not just for Makerfield, but for how politics functions today in a social media environment awash with lies.

In its report, the SMF says:

Nearly 1 in 6 pieces of news shared in local Facebook groups during the campaign is false, with misinformation heavily targeting Labour and its candidate Andy Burnham, a new study has found.

The Social Market Foundation analysed over 1,800 posts across four local Facebook groups – representing different towns and settlements within the constituency with 66,000 members across them in total – and found that the share of news posts classified as misinformation jumped from 4% before the by-election was called to 16% during the campaign, a four-fold increase.
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