Countering State-Controlled Media Propaganda Through Labeling: Evidence from Facebook

Manipulative content and propaganda are an information quality concern on social media. Although attention has been turned toward mis-and disinformation, government-controlled social media pages have been able to quietly share information to encourage users toward beliefs without sharing content that may be clearly labeled as false. To combat the effect of quiet foreign government persuasion attempts, Facebook debuted a state-controlled media label in June 2020 to alert users that a post originates from a page associated with selected governments, including Russia and China. We conduct two online randomized experiments to better understand the causal impact of these labels on intentions to engage with content on Facebook. We augment our experiments by analyzing field data from Facebook before and after these labels were implemented and studying actual engagement. We find that labels are effective in reducing engagement on social media if users notice the labels and if the label is associated with a country that is perceived negatively. More users notice the label if trained. The combination of these studies suggests that these labels can successfully reduce engagement with posts by Russian and Chinese statecontrolled pages but may even increase engagement for other countries perceived positively like Canada.

Automated summary

Manipulative content and propaganda on social media are a concern. Government-controlled social media pages can quietly encourage certain beliefs without sharing clearly false content. Facebook introduced state-controlled media labels to inform users about posts from selected governments, reducing engagement if noticed and associated with a negatively perceived country like Russia and China. However, the labels may increase engagement for positively perceived countries like Canada.