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In general, the news sites included in the sample outperformed the false news outlets with well over one million interactions per month. In addition, La Repubblica outperformed all of the news sites we considered in the sample. However, eight of the 20 false news outlets in this sample generated more interactions per month than the news website of the Italian public broadcaster, Rainews.

This column chart from the Reuters Institute shows the average monthly Facebook interactions for several prominent French news sites and some of the most popular false French news sites, in million minutes. Notably, although the prominent news sites outperformed the false ones in reach and monthly time spent on their pages, their Facebook interactions lag behind some of the interactions achieved by the false news sites.

Cumulative data of total time spent with the false news outlet (per month) remains below the time spent with news. Even if people spent just under 50 million minutes per month with Le Huffington Post, this still exceeds the total time spent with all 20 false news sites from the sample.

The graph shows that all of the false news sites in the French sample have a comparatively small reach. On average, most reached just 1% or fewer of the French online population each month in 2017. The most popular, Santé+ Magazine—an outlet that has been shown by Les Décodeurs to publish demonstrably false health information—reached 3.1% (this equates to around 1.5 million people). This was more than double that of well-known Russian outlets like Russia Today (1.5%) and Sputnik News (1.4%), which despite their international prominence, are used only by a small minority.

According to the results of the Eurobarometer survey, in all countries, more than half of respondents viewed the existence of news or information that misrepresents reality or is even false as a problem. Over 90% of respondents from Cyprus, Greece and Italy view this kind of information as problem in their country, while in Belgium only 66% share this view. The respondents were asked "Q4.1 In your opinion, is the existence of news or information that misrepresent reality or even false a problem in your country?" European Union refers to EU28. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020.

This chart shows the data collected via survey for the Flash Eurobarometer 464. The data shows the frequency with which respondents reported encountering information that they believe misrepresents reality or is even false. Respondents from Spain reported encountering such information with the highest frequency, while respondents from Finland reported encountering such information least frequently. The respondents were asked "Q2 How often do you come across news or information that misrepresent reality or even false a problem in your country?" European Union refers to EU28. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020.

The results of the Eurobarometer survey show that more than 60% of respondents reported encountering information or news that they believed misrepresented reality or was even false at least once per week. Only 17% reported that they did so seldom or never. The respondents were asked "Q.2 How often do you come across news or information that you believe misrepresent reality or is even false?" European Union refers to EU28. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020.