A large fraction of people today consume most of their news online, and social media platforms like Facebook play a significant role in directing traffic to news articles. While news organizations often use Facebook advertising to drive traffic to their websites, this practice can inadvertently lead to biases in what articles users get exposed to, or worse, could be used as a mechanism for manipulation. In this work, we examine the impact of sponsored news on Facebook on the dissemination of propaganda. Propaganda is a method of persuasion that is frequently employed to advance some sort of goal, such as a personal, political, or business objective. By analyzing 17 Million+ Facebook posts and 6 Million sponsored advertisements gathered over 182 days, we observe that advertisers of all kinds, including politicians, media houses, and commercial corporations, publish thousands of ads/boosted posts every day on Facebook. However, Facebook does not include advertisements from news organizations in their public ad archive, even when these ads address political and social issues. This exemption places news organizations in a unique position where they can publish paid political opinions without any transparency requirements. The risk is that news organizations or other third-party interest groups can selectively promote news articles that support their agenda, giving these ads an appearance of legitimacy because they link to established news sites. In this paper, we explore how such sponsored news on Facebook can be a powerful tool for spreading propaganda. Through this work, we hope to raise awareness among users about the potential biases in sponsored news and the need to critically evaluate the information they see on Facebook.

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Weaponizing the Wall: The Role of Sponsored News in Spreading Propaganda on Facebook

  • Daman Deep Singh,
  • Gaurav Chauhan,
  • Minh-Kha Nguyen,
  • Oana Goga,
  • Abhijnan Chakraborty

摘要

A large fraction of people today consume most of their news online, and social media platforms like Facebook play a significant role in directing traffic to news articles. While news organizations often use Facebook advertising to drive traffic to their websites, this practice can inadvertently lead to biases in what articles users get exposed to, or worse, could be used as a mechanism for manipulation. In this work, we examine the impact of sponsored news on Facebook on the dissemination of propaganda. Propaganda is a method of persuasion that is frequently employed to advance some sort of goal, such as a personal, political, or business objective. By analyzing 17 Million+ Facebook posts and 6 Million sponsored advertisements gathered over 182 days, we observe that advertisers of all kinds, including politicians, media houses, and commercial corporations, publish thousands of ads/boosted posts every day on Facebook. However, Facebook does not include advertisements from news organizations in their public ad archive, even when these ads address political and social issues. This exemption places news organizations in a unique position where they can publish paid political opinions without any transparency requirements. The risk is that news organizations or other third-party interest groups can selectively promote news articles that support their agenda, giving these ads an appearance of legitimacy because they link to established news sites. In this paper, we explore how such sponsored news on Facebook can be a powerful tool for spreading propaganda. Through this work, we hope to raise awareness among users about the potential biases in sponsored news and the need to critically evaluate the information they see on Facebook.