The media often attributes a portion of Donald Trump’s election to fake news, using the original meaning of that term (Macedonian teens making bank on preposterous headlines; the Islamization of Texas, Pizza-shop child-sex conspiracies, etc). Such fabrication, commentators worried, reverberated around the echo chambers so resoundingly that our very democracy was imperiled.

Or, you know, not.

Bob speaks with Brendan Nyhan, government professor at Dartmouth College, about his latest study, Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Nyhan, along with scholars Andrew Guess and Jason Reifler, found that the echo chambers we feared were narrower, albeit deeper, than previously assumed.