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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, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 08 2018, @08:39PM (2 children)
Thing is, Kyuubey, most people who hear "conservative" in this milieu then think of what is properly called reactionary. This may not have been intentionally set up, but it sure seems to be a convenient little kink in reality that stops *actual* lower-case-C-conservatives from noticing that their supposed fellow-travelers actually aren't anything like them.
Conservative-with-a-lowercase-C values are actually showing up more in the Democrats than the Republicans. Take everyone's favorite political football, "family values." Which party is advocating policies that allow for families to stay together, make enough money to subsist on, and thereby raise well-adjusted children and by extension keep society running smoothly? I'll give you a hint: neither of the *really* are, but it's the Republican party that seems hellbent on creating a massive underclass of dysfunctional poverty-stricken single mothers and stunted, malnourished, lead-poisoned (see Flint, MI) children.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 08 2018, @11:57PM (1 child)
Not [politifact.com] true [realclearpolitics.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @01:17AM
Worst supporting articles I've seen in a long time. I would also like to call your attention to Azuma's statement that neither Ds or Rs really do much as they are both quite corrupt and out to make the rich richer. Republicans do nothing to support real family values, however they sure do push religious bullshit that causes divisions in society and they actively try to reduce social safety nets.