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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: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 08 2018, @06:40PM (2 children)
Is it really that big a deal that people in Europe have a different viewpoint than people in the US, particularly, when part of the difference probably comes from people migrating from Europe to the US? For example, a lot of religious conservatives left Europe for the US in the 17th through to 19th Centuries, basically a good portion of the more extreme Protestant faiths of the time (such as Lutherans, Puritans, Quakers, Calvinists, and Anabaptists); a good portion of the people fleeing the law, tyrannical states, or personal relationships; and a heaping helping of ambitious opportunists of all stripes. That probably by itself explains the different attitudes in the US concerning religion, crime, firearm ownership, and business.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:17PM (1 child)
It is something of a deal that European are constantly reminding us that we have no "left". But, I think they err, at least to some degree. Our left is unlike their left, but our left DOES cater to the welfare masses, or at least they try hard to give that appearance. And, our right caters to the law and order crowd, or at least tries hard to appear to do so. Our left and right are quite different from the Euro left and right, but they share a lot of similarities. Immigration? Tax the rich? Benefits for the poor? There are a lot of similarities, that many Euros want to dismiss.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @01:08AM
Hmm, welfare masses you say? You mean all the poor conservatives that hog the majority of welfare budgets?
Riiiight. Guess I'd better what out for those scurrry welfare queens that flaunt their degeneracy as they jaywalk in front of your car.