• Right-leaning pages on average earned more interactions per week than left-leaning pages. Between March 18 and August 4, right-leaning Facebook pages earned on average about 45,000 more interactions (reactions, comments and, shares) per week than left-leaning pages.

• Right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same engagement relative to page size and posting frequency, and they outperformed pages without political alignment. Right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same overall interaction rate (a metric measuring the performance of a page relative to the number of page likes) during our 20-week study, at 0.15%. Pages without political alignment had an overall interaction rate of 0.08%. 

• This study’s overall findings on engagement are consistent with two previous Media Matters studies. In our initial 2018 study, Media Matters reviewed political engagement on Facebook between January 1 and July 1, 2018, and found that left-leaning and right-leaning pages on average had virtually the same interaction rate. A follow-up study published earlier this year of engagement between July 2, 2018, and March 17, 2019, also found that right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same average interaction rate.

Last week, CNN reported that President Donald Trump's administration was drafting an executive order calling on the Federal Communications Commission to develop new regulations “clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms.” Trump’s order, which specifically targets Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, is intended to address claims of “unproven systemic bias against conservatives by technology platforms.” Trump’s actions come after years of baseless claims from conservative politicians and right-wing media personalities that social media platforms actively suppress and censor right-wing accounts.

Media Matters has previously published two other studies on political engagement on Facebook that debunked allegations that Facebook was censoring right-leaning pages. The first study reviewed engagement data between January 1 and July 1, 2018, and the second, follow-up study spanned July 2, 2018, and March 17, 2019. Both studies found that right-leaning and left-leaning pages had virtually the same engagement overall and that, on average, partisan pages outperformed pages without political alignment. 

A new Media Matters study of 385 Facebook pages that regularly post about American political news found that between March 18 and August 4, 2019, right-leaning and left-leaning pages had virtually the same engagement numbers relative to page size. Media Matters also found that right-leaning pages on average earned more interactions per week than left-leaning pages and pages without political alignment. 

Right-leaning pages earned more interactions per week than left-leaning pages. Over our 20-week study, right-leaning pages earned on average almost 348,000 interactions per week, while left-leaning pages earned on average just over 302,000 interactions per week. Pages without political alignment earned on average over 329,000 interactions per week.

Right-leaning and left-leaning pages had the same average weekly interaction rate between March 18 and August 4. Interaction rates, calculated by dividing the total number of interactions (reactions, comments, and shares) per post on an individual page by the number of page likes, offer a performance metric that is proportional to the size of a page and how frequently a page makes new posts. Right-leaning and left-leaning pages both had an average weekly interaction rate of 0.15% during the 20-week period analyzed. As in the previous two Media Matters studies of political engagement on Facebook, partisan pages outperformed pages without political alignment, which had an average weekly interaction rate of just 0.08%.

In a previous study published in April, Media Matters compiled a list of 395 Facebook pages that pertained to news and media outlets, media figures, politicians, political parties, and issue-focused advocacy groups. Each page in this study: (1) had over 500,000 page likes; (2) regularly posted content related to U.S. political news; and (3) posted at least five times a week every week of our study. In the 20 weeks since our study was published, one of those 395 original pages has been removed from Facebook. An additional nine pages were excluded from this new study because they did not post at least five times a week every week of this new 20-week period. No new pages were added to this study. The resulting number of pages reviewed was 385: 127 were right-leaning pages, 169 were nonaligned pages, and 89 were left-leaning pages.

Pages were coded by two researchers and reconciled by a third researcher for two factors: (1) whether they posted content related to political news and (2) ideological alignment (left-leaning, right-leaning, nonaligned, or “other”). Each page was individually reviewed, and only pages that regularly focused on news about American politics were included in the study. The ideological alignment of a page was determined by a page’s name, information in the “About” section, and posts. Pages that expressed opposition to Trump or focused on issues primarily aimed at liberals (e.g., protecting abortion rights, calling for action against gun violence, etc.) were coded as left-leaning. Pages that expressed support for Trump or focused on issues primarily aimed at conservatives (e.g., restricting abortion rights, downplaying gun violence, etc.) were coded as right-leaning. All pages for right-wing and left-wing media outlets were automatically coded as right-leaning or left-leaning, respectively. Pages that did not have an ideological leaning in their content were coded as nonaligned. If there was doubt about whether to code a page as nonaligned or left-leaning, the page was coded as left-leaning. Pages were coded as “other” if they did not fit in any of the above categories or if they contained a mix of left-leaning and right-leaning content.

Media Matters obtained data on each page’s interactions, interaction rates, postings, and page growth in one-week intervals (Monday-Sunday) over a 20-week period, beginning the week of March 18, 2019, and ending the week of July 29, 2019.