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Fake News Sharing in US is a Right-Wing Thing, Says Study
A study by researchers at Oxford University concluded that sharing fake and junk news is much more prevalent amongst Trump supporters and other people with hard right-wing tendencies.
The study, from the university's "computational propaganda project", looked at the most significant sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to Donald Trump's first State of the Union address this January, and tried to find out who was sharing them and why.
"On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, "extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together.
Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US
What kinds of social media users read junk news? We examine the distribution of the most significant sources of junk news in the three months before President Donald Trump's first State of the Union Address. Drawing on a list of sources that consistently publish political news and information that is extremist, sensationalist, conspiratorial, masked commentary, fake news and other forms of junk news, we find that the distribution of such content is unevenly spread across the ideological spectrum. We demonstrate that (1) on Twitter, a network of Trump supporters shares the widest range of known junk news sources and circulates more junk news than all the other groups put together; (2) on Facebook, extreme hard right pages—distinct from Republican pages—share the widest range of known junk news sources and circulate more junk news than all the other audiences put together; (3) on average, the audiences for junk news on Twitter share a wider range of known junk news sources than audiences on Facebook's public pages.
http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization-partisanship-and-junk-news/
[Ed. note: page is loading very slowly; try a direct link to the actual report (pdf). --martyb]
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @12:48PM (39 children)
It's pretty easy to just dismiss this without knowing anything about the study. I think it useful to at least look at the sampling and methodology before accepting or rejecting it. Of course, that's too much work if your biases cause you to simply accept or reject the research without understanding what was actually done (the TFS certainly doesn't give much information about that).
According to the actual paper:
The online supplement mentioned can be had here [ox.ac.uk]
Note that the online supplement includes all the sources, the criteria by which those sources were classified, and the statistical methods used for the analysis, allowing you to replicate (or attempt to) this work if you choose.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @12:56PM (20 children)
Indeed. Let us recall that just because researchers claim they use a certain methodology, it doesn't mean [wattsupwiththat.com] that they actually do. Research that comes up with a notable political bias probably isn't firing on all cylinders.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:00PM (18 children)
Absolutely! You couldn't be more correct.
So tell us, now that you have access to the data and the methodology, when will you have a report for us as to whether or not you can replicate the results?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:24PM (17 children)
Certainly. There's just the matter of funding. The above group in question received funding of around 2 million Pounds over five years. I think that's a reasonable amount in order to fund replication of the data. I await your check.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:30PM (16 children)
if you wish your unfounded assertions to have any value other than bloviation, you need to provide some evidence.
What's that? You won't provide any evidence for your assertions? Then we must assume they're bullshit.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:37PM (14 children)
(Score: 5, Touché) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:45PM (13 children)
You also didn't need to claim they were right or wrong. You, apparently, without spending millions, knew what was correct and what wasn't.
Now you say you need millions to back up your claim? Why should I pay for *you* to determine if *your* assertions are correct?
Without evidence, what you claim is just rank speculation. If you want those claims treated as anything else, *you* need to back up *your* claims.
Or is the world required to just take your word for it? Not so much.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:52PM (12 children)
Because you're the one whining about it. I think it's reasonable that you pay as a result.
And I'm not willing to provide said evidence on my own dime.
Funny how that applies to everything, even the research we're discussing and your opinions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @04:04PM (11 children)
Nope. The researchers helpfully provided all their data and their methodology. Which allows other researchers to either replicate or refute their results. That's called *science*
As for my opinions, I didn't offer any WRT this study. In fact, I didn't express *any* opinion about the study itself. I expressed the opinion that you were making unsubstantiated claims. That doesn't imply that I believe the researchers were correct.
But the researchers did provide me with the tools and information I'd need to get enough information to form an opinion about the research.
Which is a heck of lot more than you did. Which is zero. Rather, you just spouted off without any evidence at all.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @06:28PM (10 children)
But not the funding as I have helpfully noted earlier. And you're making a rather generous assumption that what they claim is their data and methodology actually is. That is one of the points of replication.
But as I have noted, not the funding.
Let us remember that that research led to conclusions which happen to be politically convenient? I will not "provide" when no one is paying me to undertake that considerable effort. Instead, let us recall that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And bad research in this area has been funded before.
(Score: 4, Touché) by aristarchus on Thursday February 08 2018, @07:07PM (9 children)
Obvious rebuttal: khallow, you're doing it again! You have had your ass handed to you. You have lost this debate. Answer the nice Soylentil's question, and show the data and the skew, or please stop.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 08 2018, @08:31PM
Spoiler alert: he ain't gonna. The guy's so far out of his depth it's anyone's guess as to whether drowning, barotrauma, or one of those giant fish that's 2/3 jaws will get him first.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @10:48PM (7 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:04PM (5 children)
Shut up, khallow. Listen to much wiser men who have gone before you.
Laplace [rationalwiki.org]
You have only asserted these things, due to a delusional mind. None of them are true. You just believe them. The rest of Soyentildom has grown tired of your constant ideological foaming at the mouth. Pay up, or shut up.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:40PM (4 children)
Rather than be an idiot, read my post that I linked. There's a reason I didn't make a substantial reply in my previous post.
"None"? I bet my assertions about the funding for the group behind this research has a greater likelihood of being true than that assertion does.
I like this more assertive aristarchus. Now, just think on top of that. You should be doing pretty well, if you can manage that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday February 09 2018, @12:01AM (3 children)
Bet it doesn't! Yeah, where does that leave us? You are not helping your case, khallow. We are all pulling for you, and trying to get you to realize that you are just embarrassing yourself. You have nothing but conservative conspiracy wishful thinking behind your accusations, made obvious by your refusal to provide even the slightest evidence for them. So my dear and fluffy khallow, please desist before you make an even bigger ass out of yourself.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Friday February 09 2018, @12:25AM (2 children)
Source is here [europa.eu]. Did make a whoops. It was Euros not British pounds. That'll save some money (Pound is about 14% more than the Euro).
Fortunately, one can read my posts and see for themselves. I suggest instead of continuing this vapid assault, you just read my most substantial criticism [soylentnews.org] of the research. I recognize most of my writing was not very informative or well thought out with some error, but that post is my best argument to date.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @12:57AM (1 child)
OMG get these commie bastards out of here, how dare SN publish an article funded by CORDIS!!!
Such a bastion of liberal horror! /s
While I do think the study needs to be taken with a big grain of salt your accusations are pretty baseless and obviously a result of being triggered by this topic. QED? lol
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 13 2018, @02:08AM
Brexit took away an important member of the EU. Far right groups are throughout the EU (with the potential to cause either breakups of existing states or additional Brexit votes. Meanwhile on the US side, the Trump election gave many of those European far right groups credibility. Now, we see the EU funding research which portrays the alt-right (the US flavor of the far right) as a bunch of gullible dupes. What a coincidence!
Needless to say, I don't buy that this is a coincidence, but rather part of some overall strategy for discrediting political threats to the EU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:25PM
Here's my rebuttal [urbandictionary.com] to all of you! Jolly good show!
I cannot believe the mods went for it... Sad!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @02:13PM
Oh, no! The mothership seriously cut khallows funding! It asks now more trolling for the same money!
Expect an increased activity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @04:18AM
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:32PM (1 child)
If you use my extension you want to select each paragraph and hit "Despace" (next time).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:36PM
Thanks Takyon!
I ran out of mod points, but I'll try to remember to mod this up in 10 or so hours.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:52PM (8 children)
They're basically describing the NYT and CNN without calling out by name, aren't they?
Sure, nicely defined set of pattern matching rules, but don't forget the implied suffix, well, obviously excluding our political friends at X Y and Z.
There's also chronological issues. Maybe I'm late to the party, but I remember the BBC "in the old days" was the bastion of real journalism to the world, and then in the brexit and scottish independence voting they went full on propaganda lie mode, and I'm like "WTF BBC?". So sure, I'll agree, maybe the NYT in 1955 or 1975 was respectable, but its a laughingstock today.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @04:11PM
Actually, they do name names. Not only do they name names, they provide details as to how they arrived at that list of names.
Don't believe me. Look at their data:
http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2018/02/Polarization-Partisanship-JunkNews-OnlineSupplement.pdf [ox.ac.uk]
But you don't care about data and evidence do you? You're right and anyone who disagrees is wrong, isn't that it?
Science doesn't care what you, I, or anyone else thinks. When done properly, the data speaks for itself.
But please, don't let that stop you. We all get a nice chuckle when you blather on. As such, by all means carry on.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Redundant) by FatPhil on Thursday February 08 2018, @04:27PM (3 children)
Others have opined that their coverage of Ireland way back during The Troubles was equally flawed. I cannot comment, as I was too young, naive, and isolated from the reality of the situation back then to be able to detect propaganda. I have no hesitation to repeat their opinions neutrally herein, to save them the effort, they are as believable as the news reports we got on the mainland.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Redundant) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:21PM (2 children)
Accurately reporting what the administration was saying at the time is not Fake News.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by canopic jug on Thursday February 08 2018, @07:07PM
Only if they call out the lies, especially the blatant ones, while doing so. Otherwise they are just a conduit and not a news service.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday February 09 2018, @08:39AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
The NYT and CNN are interesting cases, because they have an absolutely overwhelming bias, but that overwhelming bias isn't left or right, it's pro-establishment - i.e. pro-rich and pro-powerful.
The strongest example of this in action that I can think of is that when the NYT got a story that George W Bush had authorized NSA eavesdropping on Americans in December 2003. The first thing they did with it was to run it by the Bush administration before even thinking about publishing it. The Bush administration asked them to wait 1 year before publishing, which would conveniently mean that the story was unknown while the presidential election was going on. The NYT happily complied with the request, even though they were very publicly pulling for John Kerry in that upcoming election.
And you'll notice something else if you watch news on CNN: Wolf Blitzer in particular pretty much never questions any report from anybody in any presidential administration. Even if it's complete nonsense. And it doesn't matter which party you're talking about.
That's of course different from other organizations' biases. For instance, Fox News is basically the propaganda outlet of the Republican Party, and therefor everything that mainstream Republicans do is good, and everything Democrats do is bad. Meanwhile, MSNBC is basically the propaganda outlet of the Democratic Party, and therefor everything that mainstream Democrats do is good, and everything Republicans do is bad. However, and this is important, anything that anyone does that furthers the goals of neither the mainstream Democrats nor the mainstream Republicans is either not newsworthy or downright evil from the point of view of both of them.
None of this is anything new, but an argument put forth many times, most famously in Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman's Manufacturing Consent.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Friday February 09 2018, @02:48PM
There's actually an interesting 'dance' that happens whenever a news organization finds out about these types of top-secret things. They always approach the agency in question to discuss it. Since we have freedom of the press in this country, the Gov can't flat out tell them not to publish it, so instead they sit the reporter or editor down and explain to them why it's important to delay/redact/drop the article in question. These talks are very serious and the Gov will often lay down their cards on the table to best make their case. The newspaper then decides what to do, and often they end up yielding on one aspect or another.
I learned of this process from an interview with a reporter of one of the major newspapers. It may have been the NYT actually.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 08 2018, @08:33PM
Read the actual material before you shoot your stupid flapping foodsucker off, will you? As you are acting now, you actually have a negative signal to noise ratio, in that any thread you post in automatically becomes dumber and more obfuscated.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by slinches on Thursday February 08 2018, @05:08PM (2 children)
Have you looked at the list of "Junk News" sites they listed? They were obviously cherry picked to generate the desired results. Why is a site like Breitbart on there while none of the progressive/liberal propaganda sites like Vox, Mother Jones, MoveOn.org, etc. are?
If this is a study at all, it isn't studying what it appears to. It's from the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford and this is their stated purpose in the about section of their page:
Note that they don't state that they are seeking solutions to stop the manipulation of public opinion and spread of propaganda, just study it. And what better way to study the effects than by creating the propaganda yourself and watching how it gets distributed? There's only so much you can do watching how other people's content is distributed because you don't know how deceptive tactics could be hidden in the methodology or in manipulation of the data or if the results are accurate, but just unexpected. Put those inaccuracies in yourself and then you know conclusively that it's fake and how transparent the attempt at deception is.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)
Since you obiously didn't read it the first time, I'm not sure why you'd do so now. I'll take the chance, but I won't hold my breath:
You impute bias to the sites you mention. Into which other two domains do they fit as well?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday February 08 2018, @10:36PM
I did read the methodology and reviewed the list of sources. The sites I mentioned certainly fall under the Bias, Professionalism and Style categories and could arguably fail in Credibility as well.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday February 08 2018, @07:34PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @01:36AM (2 children)
Suppose they had actually applied those 5 tests to CNN. Remember, only 3 of 5 are required. OK...
Professionalism at CNN, just today:
https://i.redd.it/ucwfu27sp0f01.png [i.redd.it]
Style at CNN:
The first thing that pops into my mind to satisfy the "emotionally driven language with emotive expressions" requirement is how Trump's speech got categorized as "dark". Really, WTF? Dark???
Credibility at CNN:
That time Trump fed fish with the Japanese prime minister, CNN tried to make it look like Trump was rude. CNN showed the Japanese prime minister feeding with a spoon, then showed Trump dumping his box of food. In reality, both fed with spoons, and then the prime minister dumped first.
Bias at CNN:
Well yeah... about 95% of the Trump coverage is clearly negative.
Counterfeit at CNN:
I think it meets the standard of "junk content is stylistically disguised as news". All of the Trump-Russia stuff was pure junk.
So clearly CNN qualifies. They were not in the list. If you share CNN, you are sharing fake news.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Friday February 09 2018, @01:58AM (1 child)
You do realize that the study was focused on Social Media, right? Specifically Twitter and Facebook.
What's more, the study focused not on the specific outlets, but who was sharing them.
I have no axe to grind either way. In fact, I began the post to which you replied by saying that I wasn't making *any* judgements about the study itself.
If you (and so many others) have an issue with the study, take it up with the authors of the study. Which doesn't include me.
If you go back and read what I *actually* wrote:
I'm sick of this "discussion" which pretty much adds up to a bunch of people telling *me* that somehow I'm wrong for suggesting they apply a little bit of the old scientific method.
I'm done. Go play in traffic or something, kid.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:46AM
The sites matter.
The way they were chosen was clearly biased. I suspect the bias comes from the selection of who gets to be on their little committee. They picked a bunch of people at a liberal university in the UK. They did not pick people who support UKIP or BNP (the brexit fans) in the rural part of the UK, and they certainly did not go any where near Trump country.
Let me choose the committee, and the selected sites will be different. We'd find that fake news is almost exclusively shared on Social Media (specifically Twitter and Facebook) by liberals.