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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @01:42AM (2 children)
> It takes votes. And those votes have to be bought, not with cash, but a mere promise
Uh, isn't that how this whole "democracy" thing works? Politicians make promises, people vote for them based on those promises. Crooked or not, the process is exactly the same.
You're not speaking against corruption or whatever, you're speaking against the very idea of democracy :/
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 09 2018, @05:10PM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday February 09 2018, @06:11PM
No, I'm saying democracy is only as good as its participants. Like everything else, garbage in-garbage out. People who complain about their (re)elected representatives are being very silly. Maybe they are blinded and confused by the clarity of the count. I certainly cannot share their feelings in light of the very process at their disposal that that can change things overnight should the desire ever arise.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..