Election Scandals Influenced by Social Media

 Social media has grown over the years, along with the number of fake news stories shared across various platforms. Social media has increased the impact of election scandals by constantly spreading misinformation, reinforcing algorithmic biases, and manipulating public opinion. A few concepts, including social identity theory and technological determinism, help explain why certain scandalous content spreads more quickly than others. These ideas help show how algorithms and automated accounts, or bots, can shape what voters see and believe during election cycles. Algorithms now play a major role in shaping what voters see online, which is why misinformation spreads during elections.

One platform particularly influential in shaping voters’ views, spreading fake content, and hosting political figures is X. A 2021 study by Huszár and colleagues found that the platform can shape what users see, including political content, because its algorithms prioritize tweets based on factors such as content type, connections, and user behavior. These algorithmic effects can boost messages across all political groups (Huszár, et al., 2021). Technological determinism explains the effect of X algorithms by showing how users’ feeds are based on the content and accounts they associate with or are active in. Even a single like, share, or follow can shape a user’s algorithmic feed and influence political behavior.

A 2016 study by Woolley and Howard found that social media goes beyond algorithms and now includes bots in its systems, helping to distort how people see political information: “[they] invaded political conversations worldwide . . . [they] mimic human users and produce copious information” (Woolley & Howard, 2016, p. 4885). This focuses on the idea that social platforms use automated systems to sway public opinion by spreading misinformation and using fake accounts to amplify scandals. The more people spread election scandals and the propaganda and misinformation attached to them, the more likely the scandal is to go viral. Algorithms then continue to put the content shared by the bots on users’ feeds, creating a never-ending cycle of fake news.

Another factor that shapes what voters see is the filter bubble, where social media often shows people content they already agree with. People often only see posts that support their political side leading to ideological sorting, where Democrats mostly see Democratic content while Republicans mostly see Republican content. People only see scandal claims that support their side, leading political groups to become more extreme in their beliefs and allowing misinformation to spread uncontested. A 2017 study by Allcott and Gentzkow, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, found that most people who saw fake news stories reported believing them. They also reported that on Facebook during the 2016 election, pro-Trump fake news stories were shared 30 million times, while pro-Clinton fake news stories were shared 7.6 million times (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017, p. 212). This raises the questions: Why do stories like this explode on social media, and why do scandals involving candidates like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton go viral?

Election scandals usually explode on social media because platforms like to boost emotionally charged posts that increase engagement. A 2020 study by Bossetta introduced the idea of “scandalous design,” which shows that platforms do not simply host scandals but also help create the conditions that allow them to go viral. When social media companies change features or policies in response to past scandals, those changes can shape what types of content spread the fastest (Bossetta, 2020).

Social identity theory explains the behavior of social media users and its effect on making a scandal spread. People with partisan beliefs tend to include their political party as part of their sense of self. These scandals become tools in “us vs. them” conflict online. The scandals confirm the negative beliefs they have about the opposing party or candidate, which leads them to share scandal-related posts to defend their group or attack the opposing side. 

Dr. Laeeq Khan, a tenured professor at Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication and the founding director of the Social Media Analytics Research Team (SMART) Lab, explained this dynamic during my interview with him. He said, “falsehood or lies or fake news travel faster and further than true information, and that’s because of the way [algorithms] are set up to maximize engagement…that’s the dangerous part about social media’s algorithmic gains, that it erodes trust in the election process” (L. Khan, personal communication, November 17, 2025).

A major example is the 2016 U.S. election, where fake news often overpowered or outperformed real news. Major scandals fueled by misinformation included “Pope Endorses Trump” and the “Clinton email server scandal.” The story about Trump was false, and the story about Hillary Clinton was real but distorted because of misinformation. Both stories went viral on social media. Allcott and Gentzkow’s (2017) study helps explain why this happened, showing that fake news sites received more than 40 percent of their traffic from social media, compared to only about 10 percent for mainstream news sites. This means that during the 2016 election, social media created the ideal environment for misinformation-driven scandals to spread rapidly, but why do people believe these stories?

Tamanna Rizal, a criminal justice and pre-law student at Kent State University, thinks most voters believe these fake stories because they do not do the research necessary and do not look for evidence to prove the story true or false. She said, “too many people are falling for propaganda. The only way I can tell that an article is true is when it sounds unbiased, like it’s taking a neutral stance and just laying out the facts.” 

People often accept stories that align with their existing beliefs and engage with content that reinforces them, rather than researching whether a scandal is true or false. 

Social media amplifying scandals undermines trust in elections, creating a gap between what is real and what voters see. This weakens trust in journalism and institutions because legacy media cannot keep up with the speed of misinformation spread through social platforms. Scandal-based misinformation increases political division and strengthens the tie between a person and their political party. While social media has a major effect on election scandals, algorithms play a critical role in shaping the current political landscape.