A tablet with the word fakebook is seen in this photo illustration on October 6, 2017.

Misleading news stories from doubtful sources drew in as much engagement on Facebook as articles from legitimate sources in the run up to European elections, according to a study from Oxford University.

The findings, published Tuesday by the Oxford Internet Institute, said individual so-called "junk news" stories got up to four times as many shares, likes and comments as content from reputable sources.

Junk news was defined by the institute as articles from outlets that publish "deliberately misleading, deceptive or incorrect information," typically with an ideological slant.

"On Facebook, junk news outlets tended to receive more engagement per story, but are seen, shared, and liked by far less people overall," academics at the university wrote in a research paper.

"Most viral junk news stories in our data set revolved around controversial political issues such as immigration and security rather than focusing directly on European politics."

On Twitter, by contrast, researchers said junk news appeared much less prevalent, with less than 4% of news content shared on the microblogging site coming from less trustworthy sources. In Poland, however, the level of junk news in circulation was higher at 21%.

Oxford researchers say they monitored almost 600,000 tweets related to upcoming European Parliament elections for the study, across a two-week period ending April 20. They also observed Facebook interactions with 70 junks news and mainstream news outlets between April 5 and May 5.