Breitbart News Network’s Facebook page has captured more engagement than several of the largest corporate news outlets combined amid the ongoing impeachment battle, a VICE News report revealed Monday.
With just 4 million followers, Breitbart’s page racked up more likes, comments, and shares since Sept. 1 (57.8 million) than The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today combined (42.6 million). It outpaced each of the broadcast news networks, MSNBC, and CNN. CNN Spokesman Matt Dornic rejected the comparison in a statement to VICE News.
Despite Dornic’s objection to the report, engagement data via analytics firm CrowdTangle are undeniable. CrowdTangle found Breitbart News has received more likes, comments, and shares than CNN’s primary Facebook page over the last three months.
“We’ve been dominating in our neck of the woods,” Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow told VICE News.
In addition to engaging news stories, Marlow credited Breitbart News’ success on Facebook to its use of content that fosters community interaction, with each post garnering thousands of likes, comments, and shares.
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“It’s a bigger win if they’re going straight to the website,” he explained. “But we do look at it as a more holistic approach for developing the brand.”
In another part of the interview, Marlow suggested reports of a steep traffic decline is fake news and based on data from ComScore, whose owners were recently charged with fraud.
VICE News adds:
[M]easuring media influence is notoriously difficult, and the SEC charged comScore with fraud [emphasis added] for inflating its own numbers this year. The Amazon-owned Alexa service still ranks Breitbart as the 68th most highly trafficked website in America, larger than NBC News and The Wall Street Journal. Marlow said that it still draws about 20 million readers to its site a month, in addition to its audience on social media and SiriusXM radio.
Monday’s report is not the first detailing Breitbart News’ influence on Facebook. In July, data jointly published by Axios and social media analytics company Newswhip found Breitbart News and other conservative news outlets dominated online coverage of the Democrat party primaries. According to The Wall Street Journal, Breitbart News had the most shared story — “Fact Check: Democrats Launch Primary Debate By Lying About Trump Economy” — during the first Democratic presidential debate.
Story cited here.
