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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: 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.