The majority of people engaging with misinformation on Twitter in the build up to the 2016 US presidential elections were older, conservative users, a new study suggests.

A study of more than 16,000 American registered voters who shared so-called fake news on the social media platform found that engagement was concentrated toward this demographic.

Donald Trump has used the term “fake news” to discredit legitimate journalism from well-established news outlets.

For the purpose of the study, published in the journal Science, researchers Northeastern University and Harvard University defined fake news as misinformation designed to mimic traditional news media in its online appearance but that lacked “the news media’s editorial norms”.

By analysing 16,442 Twitter accounts linked to public voter registration records, the researchers found that just 0.1 per cent were responsible for 81 per cent of the fake news shared, most of whom were “older, conservative and politically engaged”.

11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Show all 11 1 /11 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Turn on Night Mode Twitter’s dark blue Night Mode is a lot easier on your eyes than its regular, vibrant theme. On the site, you can enable it by clicking your profile photo (on the right-hand side of the bar at the top of the screen) and selecting Night Mode. On Android and iOS, you need to tap your profile picture at the top of the screen and select Night Mode. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Lengthen your tweets A “small group” of users are no longer restricted by Twitter’s 140-character tweet limit. Even if you’re not a chosen one, you can double your limit to 280 characters on desktop by downloading the Tampermonkey plugin, going to https://gist.github.com/Prof9/c16fc4997e0ef5b22a15c43edd7f5f49, clicking Raw and then Install. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Improve search Twitter’s regular search tool can be a little messy, but Advanced Search makes it much easier for you to find specific things. Go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced and filter your search by word, hashtag, exact phrase, location, date and account. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Disable read receipts Like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, Twitter’s direct messaging service shows you when your messages have been seen by the person you sent them to. You can disable read receipts though. On Android, iOS and the site, go to Settings and Privacy, click on Privacy and Safety and disable read receipts. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Monitor your tweets Retweets and Likes only form part of the story, as far as tweet engagement is concerned. You can view a lot more information about how people have reacted to your updates, including the number of times they’ve been seen and the number of times people have interacted with them. Just open your tweets and hit the View Tweet Activity button. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Trim the fat If you feel like you’re drowning in push notifications, you can cut down the number you receive from Twitter by going to Settings, Notifications, Push Notifications and deselecting the types of notifications you wouldn’t like to receive. You can also enable sleep settings, which allow you to switch off all mobile updates during certain hours of the day. On the site, go to Settings, Mobile and select your hours. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Save data You can stop videos from playing automatically on desktop and the Twitter app. On the site, you can do this by going to Settings, Account, Video Tweets and unchecking Video Autoplay. On both the Android and iOS versions of the app, go to Settings, General, Data Usage, Video Autoplay, and choose between Mobile data & Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Only, and Never. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Save even more data You can save even more data and completely transform your timeline in the process by disabling images. Just go to Settings, Data Usage and uncheck the Image Previews box. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Customise your profile Editing your Twitter profile is really straightforward, just go to your profile and click the large Edit Profile button. However, there’s one customisation option that’s easy to miss. As well as your name, bio and profile photos, you can change your colour scheme. The option is only available on the Twitter site, and is sandwiched between the Website and Birthday sections. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Browse properly One of the Twitter app’s most annoying features is its in-app browser, which links automatically open up in. You can sacrifice it for your favourite mobile browser by going to Settings, Display and Sound and unchecking the Use In-App Browser box. 11 useful Twitter features you might not know about Subscribe to tweets You can set up alerts that let you know whenever a certain account tweets, but it’s a two-stage process. First, on the app, go to Settings, Notifications, Push Notifications, Tweets and turn the toggle button on. Then open the profile page of the account you want to receive notifications from, tap the Bell icon next to the Following button and choose between All Tweets, Only Live Video and Off.

The publication of the studies in the journal Science come less than a month after researchers from New York University and Princeton University published their own study relating to how misinformation spread on Facebook.

Their results revealed that self-identified conservatives over the age of 65 were seven times more likely to share fake content than people aged 18 to 29.

Despite the similar findings, the studies do not explain why conservatives are so much more inclined to spread misinformation online than liberals.

Future research into the way rumours spread could be one way of better understanding this phenomenon, according to Derek Ruths, an associate professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, who wasn’t involved in the studies.

Commenting on the findings in Science, Dr Ruths said: “There is a key blind spot in the current research: rumours. Although there has been work on the broad phenomenon of rumouring online and its connection to misinformation, there is a serious need for a better understanding of how fake-news stories transform into rumours and to what extent these rumours can amplify beliefs and infiltrate communities.

“Progress here might help explain one of the most curious and unexplained findings of the paper: that conservatives are significantly more inclined to share and see fake news than liberals.”

Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

One explanation of this, Dr Ruths suggested, would be that liberals embed misinformation in different ways and spread it through ways that can’t be reliably measured.