“Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says,” the BuzzFeed headline blared. The story’s lead declared that “Fake news headlines fool American adults about 75% of the time.”
The story appeared to play into a newly popular narrative among liberal journalists in which “fake news” is a widespread problem among American voters. But BuzzFeed’s fake news story relied on survey methodology that experts say is often unreliable, with a tiny sample size.Early on in the story, authors Craig Silverman and Jeremy Singer-Vine note that the data came “from an online survey of 3,015 US adults.” The 3,015 number is misleading, however. While the survey started with that number, the number of respondents about any of the 11 headlines consisted only of those who were already familiar with the headlines. – READ MORE
