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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]


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday February 08 2018, @04:11PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Thursday February 08 2018, @04:11PM (#634975) Homepage Journal

    They're basically describing the NYT and CNN without calling out by name, aren't they?

    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
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