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posted by martyb on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-a-right-wing-thing dept.

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.

From the Guardian:

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]


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:03PM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:03PM (#634866) Journal

    I read the main PDF and not the site and there wasn't really any mention of the supplemental information.

    If by "I read" you mean "I skimmed", then I believe you.
    Otherwise, the

    references the Online Supplement many times over.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Informative=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:45PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) on Thursday February 08 2018, @03:45PM (#634961)

    OK... let me try to help looorg make his (or at least, my...) point.

    I skimmed the paper and there's no examples of categorized data which would help analyze the trustworthiness of the supposed analysis.

    One example is the numerous, some possibly fake photoshopped, legacy media (newspaper, magazine) covers claiming Hillary has 99% odds to win, to demoralize the Trump supporters into not voting and meme the result into existence. LOL that didn't work so well did it?

    For another example the leftist chanting has never stopped nor slowed down in the last year that Trump is Literally Hitler and Trump Cooperated With The Russians Because Hitler and The Russians Historically Had a Such a Romantic Bromance. Now is that false news or propaganda or laughably call it the truth with a straight face or not counted?

    Or a VERY concrete example, a day or two below the election I reposted a semi-famous meme "Trump Voters Go To the Polls / Hillary Voters Go To the Polls" and the Trump side was the usual mismash of extremely alpha male road warrior car chase with warhammer 40K god emperor stuff, and the Hillary side was a nude submissive obviously very low-T male wearing a dog leash and a dildo and not much else, being walked on four legs down the street by a fat female dominatrix with a whip presumably a typical street scene in SF or LA or at DNC/Antifa/LegacyMedia (as if there's any difference or separation) board room meetings but a bit unusual in the civilized world. Now my question is, was that meme:

    1) Fake News falsely showing non voters or at least falsely implying either the submissive male or the W40K/Road Warrior cosplayers were entering or exiting a voting facility

    2) Totally F-ing hilarious laugh out loud slightly slanted propaganda meme from my pals on /pol/

    Its kind of important when analyzing the quality of academic political bias, which as we know has a history of incredible left wing extremism, so it would be very unwise to trust out of hand.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:38AM (#635415)

      God DAMN you're a loon. You'd recently seemed to tone it down, but I guess all you needed was a paper showing your inherent insanity to really set you off.