The number of negative ads on Facebook and Instagram in the U.S. presidential race surged after a July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump despite calls from both major parties to tone down heated rhetoric, according a new ElectionGraph report. Trump鈥檚 own ads played a significant role in the shift.
Researchers also found continued patterns of 鈥渃oordinated inauthentic behavior鈥� among some outside organizations, including a large network of Facebook pages running ads aimed at scamming the public. The analysis found an estimated $5 million spent on ads that are potential scams, or roughly 4% of the overall ad spending by outside organizations. This translates into about 234 million impressions.
The ElectionGraph project seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.
These are among the findings in the third quarterly report from the at the University鈥檚聽聽(IDJC). The report examines ads on Meta platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, mentioning primary and general election presidential candidates between Sept. 1, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024.
The latest report found the Democratic ticket (Biden-Harris, then Harris-Walz) outspending the Trump campaign 10-to-1鈥攐r roughly $50 million to $5 million鈥攐n Facebook and Instagram between September 2023 and August 2024. That gap expanded to 12-to-1 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. But Trump outpaced Biden鈥檚 and Harris鈥� campaigns combined by about 5-to-1 in ads categorized as 鈥渦ncivil.鈥�
The data shows a 4-to-1 difference in impressions on the social media platforms, or about 1 billion impressions for the Democratic ticket compared with 250 million impressions for the GOP. This gap doesn鈥檛 take into account Trump-related spending on messaging on social platform X, Trump鈥檚 Truth Social network or other media platforms.
In addition to campaigns鈥� spending, nearly 3,500 Facebook pages from outside organizations have spent $55 million over the past year in an effort to influence the public this election season.
ElectionGraph seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests. The project is supported by a grant and use of analytics software from鈥�, the world鈥檚 leading graph database and analytics company.
The ElectionGraph team鈥檚 efforts include pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram. ElectionGraph also has developed a publicly accessible dashboard to explore its findings.
While Meta allows approved organizations to access ad data, such data is not required to be made available鈥攁nd is not similarly trackable鈥攐n TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat. The findings nevertheless provide a framework to visualize the fire hose of information and misinformation targeting voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 elections.
The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the and the .
“My concern with the ongoing scams running on Facebook and Instagram is that they look like legitimate advertisements, but they are full of falsehoods and even deepfakes, further polluting the information environment and deceiving voters,”聽says , a professor in the School of Information Studies and ElectionGraph鈥檚 lead researcher.
Social media scams that exploit heightened sentiments during important moments like elections have become widespread, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j.
鈥淭his important research, enabled by Neo4j, can help voters and policymakers to distinguish legitimate actors from malicious ones hidden within complex networks,鈥� Webber says. 鈥淲ithout this technology, achieving such insights would be almost impossible.”
Adds IDJC Kramer Director : 鈥淩eal, bipartisan concerns about election-related violence鈥攁ccentuated by assassination attempts against former President Trump鈥攈ave proved no match for the magnetic pull of negative, uncivil and attack-ad campaigning that Trump himself and his rivals consider too useful to set aside.鈥� Talev is a journalist and professor of practice in the Newhouse School.
