At the Pandemic's Start, Facebook Users Shared More News Links Than Healthcare Sources

Despite several initiatives by the social network, just 1% linked to scientific organizations

Facebook users who posted about the Covid-19 pandemic during its early stages in the U.S. linked to far more news sources than healthcare and science sites, according to new analysis from the Pew Research Center that looked at public posts made in March.

Those news sources included the sites of (in order of total interactions) TV stations, digitally native news organizations, print publications, news aggregators, radio stations/podcasts and wire services.

Facebook users prioritizing sharing coronavirus content would match the trend of publishers seeing record traffic surrounding their pandemic coverage in the early days of the outbreak.

The think tank identified roughly 6.5

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