Facebook Posts in Early Days of Biden Administration Reflect Ideological Divide

A new study of posts on popular public Facebook pages about the early days of the Biden administration finds that the focus of these posts, as well as the assessments of the new president, differed widely by the ideological orientation of the pages.

This analysis – which follows a recent Pew Research Center report examining a broader sample of 25 major news outlets on TV, radio and the web – focuses on the 1,226 posts published on 25 popular public Facebook pages focused on current affairs (based on average total monthly interactions) during a crucial week for President Joe Biden, March 8-14, in which he signed the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.1 (The Center also fielded a survey that week about Americans’ views of news about the new administration.) With about one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) saying they often get political news on social media, this latest research explores how news coverage on social media may have differed from broader coverage of the new administration.