How we analyzed Trump’s posts that cite right-wing media outlet
Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of all 6,081 posts from Donald Trump’s official page between January 1, 2020, and January 6, 2021.
Each post was examined by at least two researchers to determine if the post cited a right-wing media outlet, and if so, which one. A third researcher coded the post if the initial two researchers did not agree on a code. The final codes were determined by majority opinion among the three researchers.
To determine which right-leaning media outlet Trump cited, researchers examined:
- Linked articles and videos.
- Embedded or “native” videos posted directly to Trump’s page; outlets were often identified via logo or key personalities.
- Mentions of outlets or news personalities; news personalities, except Hannity and Tucker who had individual codes, were coded based on the media outlet they most prominently represent.
We reviewed the resulting 868 posts, including the total number of interactions -- reactions, comments, and shares -- they earned using CrowdTangle.
How we identified and analyzed all posts from right-leaning pages that were related to Fox
Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.
For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.
The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.
Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts made by these 1,773 Facebook pages that were posted between January 1, 2020, and January 6, 2021, and related to Fox News and Fox Business.
We defined posts as related to Fox News and Fox Business if a post had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “fox news,” “fox,” “Bret Baier,” “Baier,” “Maria Bartiromo,” “Bartiromo,” “donna brazile,” “shannon bream,” “bream,” “tammy bruce,” “tucker,” “tucker carlson,” “bartiromo,” “jedediah bila,” “neil cavuto,” “newt gingrich,” “gingrich,” “trey gowdy,” “gowdy,” “greg gutfeld,” “gutfeld,” “hannity,” “sean hannity,” “pete hegseth,” “hegseth,” “mollie hemingway,” “bill hemmer,” “hemmer,” “steve hilton,” “mike huckabee,” “brit hume,” “ingraham,” “gregg jarrett,” “brian kilmeade,” “kilmeade,” “mark levin,” “levin,” “martha maccallum,” “maccallum,” “andrew napolitano,” “judge napolitano,” “charles payne,” “dana perino,” “todd piro,” “byron york,” “jesse watters,” “watters,” “chris wallace,” “wallace,” “varney,” “marc thiessen,” “leo terrell,” “marc siegel,” “nicole saphier,” “john roberts,” “geraldo rivera,” “ed rollins,” “karl rove,” “judge jeanine,” “jeanine pirro,” “jon scott,” “sean duffy,” “duffy,” “ainsley earhardt,” “earhardt,” “doocy,” “trace gallagher,” “melissa francis,” “harris faulkner,” or “faulkner.”
We reviewed the data for the resulting 99,592 posts, including total interactions -- reactions, comments, and shares -- using CrowdTangle.
