Political debate on Facebook is being dominated by dozens of incredibly viral news stories in support of Jeremy Corbyn, despite the Conservatives holding a massive lead in national opinion polls, according to the first edition of the BuzzFeed News Social Barometer.



The most shared stories about the general election during the first fortnight of the campaign have been overwhelmingly positive about the Labour leader. By contrast, the only stories regarding Theresa May and the Conservatives that have gone viral are negative.

The Social Barometer attempts to track which election-related stories are being shared by users on Facebook and will be updated weekly throughout the election. The methodology behind the ranking has been published online and the findings will be updated weekly – with an attempt to categorise the sentiment of each piece.

Many of the most viral stories are from non-mainstream sites, showing the growing influence of the new group of alt-left media outlets that have surged in popularity since the election of Corbyn as Labour leader.

However, it also suggests that many Conservative supporters are reluctant to publicly share positive articles about their party on social media – but are very happy to vote Tory in the privacy of the polling booth.

The split may also reflect the different age profile of the two parties' supporters and the extent of their social media usage.



The most popular political article during the first two weeks of the election campaign was entitled "How many of Jeremy Corbyn's policies do you actually disagree with?" from the blog AnotherAngryVoice and was shared almost 80,000 times.

This was closely followed by a guide to anti-Conservative tactical voting hosted on the image-sharing site infogr.am. A post on The Canary with the headline "In only 72 hours, young people show they could have a nasty surprise in store for Theresa May" also made the top five, which was completed by two links – one liveblog and one comment piece – from The Guardian.

In total, six of the 20 most-shared election-related links on Facebook during the first fortnight of the election were from media sources that sit well outside the mainstream media.

