The Carter Center today published “The Big Lie and Big Tech,” a new report that details the role played by “repeat offenders”—media known to repeatedly publish false and misleading information—in spreading election fraud narratives in online echo chambers during the 2020 election.
The Carter Center report found that while myriad forces—politicians, influencers, hyper-partisan media, and citizens—coalesced to advance The Big Lie, known repeat offenders provided critical connective tissue in the spread of misinformation on social media. They often inserted out-of-context information into broader narrative frames, helping to amplify misinformation faster than it could be fact-checked.
“This week’s revelations by the Facebook whistleblower once again raise important questions about the role that tech companies play in shaping worldviews,” said David Carroll, director of the Carter Center’s Democracy Program. “The online evolution of The Big Lie wasn’t an aberration caused by specific actors or circumstances. Social media companies need to take steps to repel efforts to undermine democracy.”
The Carter Center’s repeat offender list came from NewsGuard, a nonpartisan organization that tracks articles that have been fact-checked and debunked. The Center analyzed 2.93 million posts in 883 Facebook groups engaged in partisan political discourse and found repeat-offender content in 76% of all groups—and in 97% of right-leaning groups—between Aug. 17, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2021.
In right-leaning Facebook groups, one of every five articles came from repeat-offender sources. That percentage jumped to one in four between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Ten of the top 15 media sources that saw the highest spikes in appearances in right-leaning groups were known misinformation repeat offenders. Notably, the Center found a 540% increase in articles from NewsMax, a 350% increase in links from OANN, and a 210% increase in content published by InfoWars.