This study analyzes Facebook posts about the Biden administration on the most popular public Facebook pages in the time period studied that focus on current affairs. With about a third of U.S. adults (36%) regularly getting

This analysis – which follows a

There were also clear differences by self-described ideology in the topics these pages posted about. Even with the enactment of the coronavirus relief bill, the leading topic on conservative Facebook pages during the week studied was immigration, which accounted for 32% of all posts on these pages – well ahead of the economy, at 12%. On liberal pages, however, the economy dominated, accounting for just under half of their posts (46%). In stark contrast to the conservative pages, only 2% of posts on liberal pages were about immigration. (Only two of these 25 pages

One way to gauge the impact of Facebook posts is to measure their engagement through the

Liberal and conservative Facebook pages widely diverged from each other in how they discussed the early days of the Biden administration across a range of aspects – including assessments of the Biden administration, storylines covered, and whether the pandemic and the former president were mentioned.

Of the 25 popular current affairs-oriented public Facebook pages examined in this report, nearly all gave some indication of an ideological orientation. Pages that identified as liberal described themselves as liberal, progressive, Democratic, or opposed to conservativism or Republicans, while pages that identified as conservative described themselves as conservative, Republican, or opposed to liberalism or Democrats. Researchers used these descriptions to classify the ideology of the page as liberal, conservative, or neither.

In all, 11 of the 25 pages self-described as liberal and 12 as conservative. Just two pages did not describe themselves as favoring one side of the political spectrum; these were classified as “didn't self-identify” and are less of a focus of this analysis.

The most dramatic difference between posts from the two ideologically different groups of Facebook pages is in their overall assessment of the Biden administration.

In contrast, the leading topic in posts from conservative pages was immigration (32% of posts there), with interest likely fueled by the

Looking at the overall figures for that week (rather than ideology, which was assessed differently in these two samples), Facebook posts and broader coverage focused on the same topics at about the same rates, but there was a moderate difference between the tone of the stories from the earlier study and the social media posts.

The most common topic in each analysis was the economy – which was the focus of 28% of all the Facebook posts studied, modestly less than the 36% of stories in the broader media sample that were devoted to that subject. And the ranking of topics was similar as well, with the economy at the top spot followed by a mix of health care, immigration, political skills and appointments, although there was greater emphasis on immigration among the Facebook posts.

The overall assessment of the new administration varied noticeably between the two groups.

In the sample of broader coverage during that week of March, a roughly equal proportion of stories carried a positive assessment (31%) as a negative assessment (28%) of the Biden administration. But Facebook posts were 15 percentage points more likely to have a negative than a positive assessment (36% vs. 21%).

For both posts and stories, however, a plurality of coverage was neither negative nor positive (44% of posts and 41% of stories).

Positive posts about Biden administration generated highest engagement

Among all the Facebook posts studied, those with a positive assessment of the president or his administration received an average of about 13,800 interactions per post, 29% higher than the about 10,700 average interactions generated by posts with a negative assessment.

Overall, about six-in-ten Biden-related posts studied (59%) linked to a site outside of Facebook. However, self-identified conservative pages were far more likely to do so: 83% of posts from conservative pages included externallinks, compared with 29% of self-identified liberal pages.⁸

Many of these posts – especially on the conservative pages – linked to their own content rather than to content from another website (e.g., a post on the Pew Research Center Facebook page posting a link to pewresearch.org vs. another site). Overall, four-in-ten posts (40%) linked to their own content; this number rose to 72% for posts on conservative pages but was just 4% for posts on liberal pages.