Trends of Pink Slime Journalism Advertisement Expenditure and Spread on Facebook from 2019-2024

2025-10-16

AI Summary

This study investigates the dissemination mechanisms and advertising-driven logic underlying “pink slime news”—low-quality, partisan content masquerading as local journalism—on Facebook from 2019 to 2024. Using publicly available page and group post data, we employ content analysis, time-series modeling, and LDA topic modeling. Results reveal a statistically significant positive correlation between advertising expenditure and group-level resharing volume; although posting frequency declined annually, ad spending rose steadily—peaking sharply during election years—and remained elevated around contentious issues (e.g., race, immigration) in non-election years. Our key contribution is the first empirical identification of an “advertising-driven group amplification” mechanism, enabling the development of a transferable predictive framework for disinformation spread. This framework provides actionable data support and evidence-based policy recommendations for platform governance and electoral information ecosystem interventions.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Natural Language Processing: Fact-Checking / Misinformation Detection (NLP Focus)
• Machine Learning: Adversarial Learning & Robustness

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion
• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Responsible Web: Mitigating misinformation and disinformation

Abstract

Pink slime journalism is a practice where news outlets publish low-quality or inflammatory partisan articles, claiming to be local news networks. This paper examines the spread of pink slime sites on Facebook using public posts from Pages and Groups. We evaluate the trends of sharing pink slime sites on Facebook and patterns regarding the advertisements purchased by the parent organizations of the pink slime news networks. Our analysis discovers that while the number of pink slime posts on Facebook pages have decreased over the years, advertising dollars have increased. The increase in advertising dollars influences an increase in Facebook group posts. Further, the advertising expenditure increases during election years, but contentious topics are still discussed during non-election years. By illustrating the patterns and themes from US election years of 2020, 2022, and 2024, this research offers insights into potentially dangerous journalism tactics, and provides predictions for future US Presidential Elections.

Problem

• Analyzing pink slime journalism advertising trends on Facebook from 2019-2024
• Investigating relationships between ad spending and content spread patterns
• Examining election-year influence on partisan journalism tactics and expenditures

Innovation

• Analyzed Facebook posts and ad spending trends
• Discovered increased advertising despite decreased posts
• Linked election years with higher advertisement expenditure