Faker Island: Profiling misinformation sharers on the French Twittersphere
Abstract
What are the distinctive characteristics of misinformation sharers? So far, most studies have focused on the U.S., a two-party system with a highly polarized media landscape, leaving open the question of what misinformation sharers look like in other socio-political contexts. Research has also prioritized testing causal links between cognitive or political variables and misinformation sharing, while paying less attention to fine-grained descriptions of who these users are. To address this gap, we analyze the French Twittersphere using ideological inference methods and a matching procedure. Drawing on four million tweets, we compare 1,907 users who shared at least one URL flagged as false or misleading by fact-checkers with 958 ideologically matched control users who did not. We show that misinformation sharers are more likely to be located at the extremes of the political spectrum, express hostility toward ruling elites and institutions, display political markers in their bios, use pseudonyms, share media content, engage in high-intensity and retweet-oriented activity, and express negative emotions. They also disproportionately circulate topics related to immigration, terrorism, and criticism of mainstream media. However, their language does not indicate lower analytical thinking. By shifting the focus from cognitive vulnerability alone to political self-presentation, anger, and amplification practices, this study contributes to ongoing theoretical debates and calls for further research on the activist practices and party affiliations of misinformation sharers.