So-called “fake news” has renewed concerns about the prevalence and effects of
misinformation in political campaigns. Given the potential for widespread dissemination of
this material, we examine the individual-level characteristics associated with sharing false
articles during the 2016 US presidential campaign. To do so, we uniquely link an original
survey with respondents' sharing activity as recorded in Facebook profile data. First and
foremost, we find that sharing this content was a relatively rare activity. Conservatives were …