Early Biden Postings On Facebook Reflect Ideological Divide

Early assessments of the Biden administration differed widely on popular public Facebook pages by the pages’ self-identified ideological orientation, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. The study, building on a recent Center report examining media coverage of the new administration, concentrates on 1,226 posts published by 25 popular public Facebook pages focused on current affairs from March 8-14, 2021, the same week Biden signed the $1.9 billion coronavirus relief bill. The analysis finds that among popular public Facebook pages that describe themselves as conservative (12 of the 25 studied), 1% of posts carried positive assessments of Biden, while 67% were negative. For those Facebook pages that self-identified as liberal (11 of the 25), only 1% of the posts carried negative assessments while 47% were positive. Two of the 25 pages studied did not describe themselves as favoring one side of the political spectrum and are less of a focus of this analysis. 

Clear differences by ideology also emerged when analyzing the topics popular Facebook pages posted about when discussing the Biden administration. The economy dominated posts on popular Facebook pages that self-identified as liberal, with 46% of all posts on these pages focusing on that topic. The leading topic on popular Facebook pages that self-identified as conservative was immigration, accounting for 32% of all posts on these pages.

The analysis, conducted using data from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned and operated by Facebook, also compares posts on these 25 popular Facebook pages with news coverage of the early days of the Biden administration from the broader mix of outlets studied in the Center’s previous report.

Other key findings from this exploration of coverage of Biden’s early days on Facebook:

• Posts about the Biden administration that mentioned Trump received higher engagement than those that didn’t. Posts that mentioned Donald Trump averaged about 19,800 interactions (defined as the sum of likes, shares and comments generated), more than twice as much engagement as posts that did not invoke the former president (roughly 9,200).
• Posts about the Biden administration from liberal Facebook pages were more likely to mention COVID-19. Beyond the main topic of a post, researchers also analyzed whether COVID-19 was mentioned in the text of the post or in the link or video contained in the post. Roughly two-thirds of posts (68%) about the Biden administration from liberal pages mentioned the coronavirus – more than twice as often as conservative pages (28%).
• Posts that had a positive assessment of the Biden administration generated more interactions than posts that carried a negative one. Posts with a positive assessment of the administration generated an average of about 13,800 interactions per post, 29% higher than the roughly 10,700 interactions for each post with a negative assessment. More generally, posts from liberal pages did somewhat better in engagement than posts from conservative pages – an average of about 12,500 interactions per post vs. about 11,300 interactions.
• Facebook posts and broader news coverage about Biden’s early days (television, radio and online news outlets studied in the Center's previous report) are similar in topics covered. The economy was the biggest topic in each analysis. It was the focus of 28% of all Facebook posts studied, modestly less than the 36% of stories in the broader media sample that were devoted to that subject. And the ranking of topics was similar for both, with the economy at the top spot followed by a mix of health care, immigration, political skills and appointments.
• Facebook posts assessed the Biden administration more negatively than broader news coverage. Facebook posts during the week studied were 15 percentage points more likely to have a negative than a positive assessment of the Biden administration (36% vs. 21%), while broader news coverage had a roughly equal proportion of stories with a positive assessment (31%) as a negative one (28%). For both posts and stories, however, a plurality of coverage was neither negative nor positive (44% of posts and 41% of stories).