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Fake News Sharing In US Is a Rightwing Thing, Says Oxford Study (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Low-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by rightwing social network users, according to a new study from the University of Oxford. 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." The research involved monitoring a core group of around 13,500 politically-active U.S. Twitter users, and a separate group of 48,000 public Facebook pages, to find the external websites that they were sharing.

10 of 997 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Hmmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't it wonderful that you can repeat their study? That's the nice thing about actual science.

    Good luck with the random pictures that get corrupted and photoshopped to further their own beliefs. Left wing news might be biased and some recent even wrong... But you can mostly go back to the source to verify.

  2. Re:It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wanting the FBI Director to go easy on investigating his crony, and firing him when he refused to pledge loyalty.

    Bragging to a foreign power (***Russians***) that firing the FBI director lifted a weight off his shoulders

    Wanting to fire the NEXT FBI Director when it became clear the investigations were reaching closer to his inner circle.

    And I won't go into the sordid details about Sessions.

    And the kicker is, its not even just about obstruction. Follow the Russian money, through Deutsche Bank, to various Trump Organization entities. Ok, you dont have to, Mueller is.

    All this idiotic "there is no proof of collusion/crime" is either willful ignorance or desperate pleading. Do you think a smart prosecutor/investigator reveals his/her intentions or evidence before an indictment is ready? Not everyone has the self-discipline or neediness of a 4 year old boy.

  3. Re: It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by CrankyFool · · Score: 5, Informative

    Impeding an investigation is by itself a crime, irrespective of whether or not the investigation is into a crime that is later proved to be prosecutable, or the prosecution wins. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... notes, "If the person willfully and knowingly tried to protect a suspect." Key word here is "suspect". So when Flynn was being investigated -- by definition, a suspect -- Trump attempting to take the heat off of him was "willfully and knowingly" trying to "protect a suspect."

  4. Re:If you believe in lies, then you become extremi by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is amusing to watch, isn't it? First you define anything Republicans like as fake. Then you check to see if Republicans or Democrats absorb more fake news. Of course, your results confirm your selection process.

    I know it's heretical to even suggest it, but if you read the (peer-reviewed) article, you will learn that your characterization of this research is completely wrong.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  5. Re: If you believe in lies, then you become extre by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    So basically in their methodology, the effluence of semi-official propaganda organs is described as "real news"; and dissenting views are labeled "fake news".

    No, that's not even close. They didn't describe "real news" at all, only "fake news" which had to fit a set of very specific criteria, including 1) the lack of transparency in listing the names of the authors, 2) whether they illustrated their stories with lots of capital letters, memes, emotional language, etc., 3) Not listing sources or giving attribution, 4) whether the site has a distinction between news and opinion 5) whether the stories were "counterfeit". For example, several of the sites used linked to web sites that were designed to look like a well-known news source, including using a URL that mimicked the well-known source. Basically, spoofing. The sites had to meet all of these criteria in order to qualify for the seed group.

    The methodology is entirely laid out in the study's text and in the supplemental documentation provided.. Your characterization isn't even close to the methods that they used. In a way, your willingness to misrepresent what the study said is a pretty good example of what the study showed: The desire to spread mis-information in order to try to advance a right-wing agenda.

    Again, here is the link to the full peer-reviewed study:

    http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/re...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. Re:It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    So accusing Donald Trump of being a Russian agent isn't extremist leftist globalist fake news?

    Except I see very few people on the left accusing Trump of being a Russian agent, I won't say no one, but I haven't seen anyone on my FB feed claim it, and I have a lot more FB friends on the left than the right. And I've seen a ton of claims on the right that are at least as conspiratorial as that.

    Now there's suspicion it's possible, it was alleged by the Steele Dossier, and people discussed the possibility at the time, but when no evidence of that accusation turned up people generally stopped talking about it.

    Nothing that they try to throw at this guy can stick

    You mean nothing aside from 4 members of his campaign already being charged (and two pleading guilty), including his campaign manger and National Security advisor.

    Not to mention proving multiple instances of members of the Trump campaign contacting or seeking contact with Russian officials and lying about that contact, including Trump's Attorney General and his son.

    And we know there are active investigations into money laundering that involve Trump's son in law, obstruction of justice involving Trump, and probably a lot of other things that, like the Papadopoulos plea, we haven't heard about yet because it's being kept secret.

    and even Wikileaks has come up dry on him.

    What do you think Wikileaks is? They're not an elite investigative body, they post documents that people give them. How is them not having been given dumps on Trump exculpatory in the slightest?

    Hell, they haven't posted his tax returns despite those being one of the single most sought after documents out there. Does that mean you think Trump never got tax returns?

    --
    I stole this Sig
  7. Re:Hmmmm.... by sg_oneill · · Score: 4, Informative

    A leftist institution publishes a study that only the rightists news is fake? Naaaaaah... no possible way for bias in that!

    Well the Guardian might have bias , but this does not reflect on what the actual study says.
    So heres the abstract

    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 Trumpâ(TM)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 pagesâ"distinct from Republican pagesâ"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 Facebookâ(TM)s public pages.

    Suggestion: Argue the topic, dont shoot the messenger

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  8. Re: It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by Jesus+H+Rolle · · Score: 4, Informative

    General Flynn was an honorable man. I don't know what he did to make the dark state so angry - but clearly he did *something* to precipitate his purge. I believe he was trying to protect the Republic from its many enemies within.

    General Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding his Russian contacts. Drop the conspiracy theories already.

  9. Re:It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except I see very few people on the left accusing Trump of being a Russian agent, I won't say no one, but I haven't seen anyone on my FB feed claim it, and I have a lot more FB friends on the left than the right

    This comment was posted directly above yours. You have unusual friends tbh. You're lucky, I get tons of "Russia Trump" spam in my feed.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Re: It's really a Hillary For Prison Thing by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thank you for demonstrating fake news in a nutshell. Even in the Nunes memo acknowledges that the Steele dossier wasn't the only input in question. Moreover, Carter Page was under US law enforcement surveillance before the Steele dossier even reached the attention of the FBI. Facts matters. The idea that the FBI and DOJ were somehow biased in favor of Clinton is simply silly when James Comey, a Republican appointee, was the one who announced a few days before the election that he was reoppening the Clinton email investigation when he has no legal requirement to make such an announcement.