Very liberal or conservative legislators most likely to share news on Facebook

The most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records shared news links in about 14% of all their posts. But members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts. Some of the outlets included in the study were linked to exclusively by Democrats or by Republicans in Congress. The most conservative Republicans shared news from these outlets almost 10 times as much as the most moderate Republicans. Among the most conservative Republicans, 11% of news links went to outlets exclusively shared by other Republicans. But among the most moderate Republicans, only 1% of news links that members shared on Facebook were to such outlets. There was little difference among Democrats in the rate of sharing news from outlets linked to exclusively by Democrats across the ideological spectrum. Overall, 5% of the news links that members of Congress shared on Facebook went to outlets linked to exclusively by Democrats or by Republicans. Among Democrats, these outlets included The Nation, Mic.com, The Root and New Republic. Among Republicans, these outlets included Breitbart, The Daily Signal, The Blaze, CNS News, Conservative Review, The Federalist and several other sites.