Over the past three years, CrowdTangle estimates that Fox News’ main Facebook page, with 17 million followers, has racked up 80 percent more reactions, comments, and shares than CNN, which has 31 million followers. The Fox page’s engagement rate — the average number of engagements per post per follower — was higher than any major news organization over the same period, and some five times that of The New York Times.

As Facebook continues to grapple with the spread of misinformation and divisive content, causing critics to worry that it could pose threats to democracy, the lead that Fox News has built over less partisan news organizations on the platform strikes some as painfully ironic.

“The way Fox News dominates on Facebook is a good example of the way engagement can distort social media,” said Tara McGowan, CEO of the nonprofit digital organization Acronym and former digital director of Priorities USA, a Democratic political action committee. “The fact they can drive the exact same storyline each and every day across channels — from television to social media — is so much more effective at influencing hearts and minds than political advertising.”

…The influence of Fox on Facebook comes as Trump, Republican lawmakers, and Fox News personalities have repeatedly accused Silicon Valley of bias against conservatives. Rupert Murdoch, the Trump ally who owns Fox parent company Fox Corp., has similarly condemned the tech giant publicly and privately for wreaking havoc on the news industry.

…At a time when many news organizations started tuning out reader comments, if not blocking them altogether, Fox News mined comments for ideas. A former Fox News producer said its social team scoured responses to Facebook posts to see which topics popped and why, using their numbers or intensity to inform future posts.

What they found was a lot of rage, not just toward President Barack Obama but also toward mainstream Republicans.

…What’s more, the person said, the engagement trends suggested a fear of a changing America — fear of immigration, fear of globalization, and changing expressions of national pride — bubbled beneath the criticism. The social team doubled down.

…“We would intentionally post content that would be divisive and elicit a lot of comments,” the former social producer said, adding that high-engagement posts would inform programming decisions on TV. “Fox was all about a numbers game.”

…What’s clear is that Fox News’ rise on Facebook has meant that the GOP has a large and growing advantage as more political content comes users’ way. 2020 campaigns have collectively spent nearly $10 million on Facebook ads so far this year, according to the digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive, and its analysis of the platform’s publicly available targeting data shows that Team Trump has overwhelmingly honed in on seniors in recent weeks. Fox News’ organic reach on Facebook, coupled with its alignment with Trump’s messaging, is likely to amplify that strategy.

How Fox News dominates Facebook in the Trump era – VICE News

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