The findings from the Social Market Foundation (SMF), supported by the BBC, come against a backdrop of mounting financial pressure on local journalism, recent high-profile cases of misinformation leading to disorder, and several major local elections taking place up and down the country.
Nearly half of Britons (46%) now seek out local news through social media, second only to television and ahead of every other source. Over a third (34%) make use of local social media groups for this purpose.
However, these platforms and many of the people that spread news-like information online do not come with fact-checking and editorial guidelines associated with the press. And, in areas where local journalism has collapsed entirely, there is no authoritative local voice to push back or for local audiences to seek out trusted news when falsehoods begin to spread.
The SMF analysed over 125,000 social media posts across local Facebook groups, X searches and Nextdoor communities (see notes). SMF research revealed that 2 in 5 local Facebook groups and over four-fifths of X searches featured at least one piece of misinformation in their last 1,000 posts. Nearly 1 in 26 (4%) of news related posts on Facebook were misinformation; on X the ratio is over 1 in 4 (28%). Although we focused on Facebook, Nextdoor and X because their platform design facilitates localised research, we do not believe that this pattern of local misinformation is likely to be limited to these platforms alone.
Areas with no or limited local news outlets had nearly three times as much fake news (0.3% of posts) as the national average (0.1%) in Facebook groups. An estimated 4.4 million people in the UK currently live in a ‘news desert’, as per the Public Interest News Foundation.
Analysis of four Facebook groups in Gorton and Denton during the recent by-election found that 7.3% of news-related posts were misinformation. More broadly, across locations that held local elections in May, misinformation as a share of news-related posts rose from 8.2% to 12.9% in the weeks before polling day (56% increase) and misinformation as a share of all posts increased from 0.12% to 0.15% (26% increase). Key cases where misinformation had to be tackled include fake adverts impersonating the City of York Council last year, and in Wakefield where doctored images of Cllr Armaan Khan were used to spread misinformation (see notes).
The report notes that targeted misinformation campaigns have been reported by Tortoise media as a possible factor in councillors losing their seats in Oldham and Merthyr Tydfil during local elections.
The SMF is calling on government, regulators and technology companies to act on multiple fronts:
Ministers should expand the BBC’s Local Democracy Reporter Service (journalists funded by the BBC, but are employed by regional news organisations); for local news outlets themselves, government should make it easier for to gain charitable status; and government should invest in public misinformation awareness campaigns.
The broadcasting regulator Ofcom should test and publish assessments of how well platforms tackle fake news, with enforcement powers where they fall short, and require election-specific protocols including tighter moderation and limits on how far content can spread.
Platforms themselves should badge and prioritise content from verified news organisations, flag suspicious or inauthentic accounts, and label AI-generated content – while publishing far more data on misinformation levels to enable independent scrutiny.
Jamie Gollings, Deputy Research Director at Social Market Foundation and co-author of No news is bad news, said:
“For the first time, we can see the true scale of fake news in the local social media spaces where millions of people now get their news. Local misinformation is the silent killer of trust in Britain; for too long it has gone under the radar. We cannot afford further erosion of local journalism, which is our best defence against local misinformation.
In areas without a local news outlet, misinformation is nearly three times as prevalent as the national average. Around elections, it surges further still. Not acting fast enough would be a mistake – affecting how people vote, how they feel about their neighbours, and whether they trust the institutions that serve them.
Government, platforms and broadcasters all have a role to play, and the cost of inaction is one communities cannot afford.”
Jason Horton, BBC Nations Chief Operating Officer, said:
“The BBC plays a vital role in countering misinformation and ensuring communities have access to trusted reporting close to home. Through our Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), a unique network of 165 journalists funded by the BBC and employed by commercial newsrooms, we help fill gaps in local democracy reporting, producing over 500,000 original stories since the service began. We thank the Social Market Foundation for its report, which strengthens our ambition to ensure every community is well informed and better equipped to identify and challenge misinformation.”
