“One thing the study did not find is evidence of substantial amounts of Russian news sources being shared. “The political conversations on social media exclude a Russian audience group,” the researchers concluded.” (last sentence in article).
Survey dates: “90 days between October 20, 2017 and January 19, 2018.” (p. 5)…(#1 on study’s Acknowledgment list is of course, US taxpayers: 1. National Science Foundation, 2. European Research Council, and 3. EPSRC, part of British Research Council, p. 6) (Junk news sources used for this analysis, p.6)
2/6/18, “Fake news sharing in US is a rightwing thing, says study," UK Guardian, Alex Hern
“University of Oxford project finds Trump supporters consume largest volume of ‘junk news’ on Facebook and Twitter.”
“Low-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the US 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 [2018], 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 US Twitter users, and a separate group of 48,000 public Facebook pages, to find the external websites that they were sharing.
Users who shared similar collections of links were grouped together depending on what they were discussing: on Twitter, some identified cohorts included “Conservative Media”, “Trump Supporters” (a distinct group from “Republican Party”) and “Resistance”; on Facebook, those audience groups included “Hard Conservative”, “Women’s Rights” and “Military/Guns”.
The findings speak to the level of polarisation common across the US political divide. “The two main political parties, Democrats and Republicans, prefer different sources of political news, with limited overlap,” the researchers write.
But there was a clear skew in who shared links from the 91 sites the researchers had manually coded as “junk news” (based on breaching at least three of five quality standards including “professionalism”, “bias” and “credibility”). “The Trump Support group consumes the highest volume of junk news sources on Twitter, and spreads more junk news sources, than all the other groups put together. This pattern is repeated on Facebook, where the Hard Conservatives group consumed the highest proportion of junk news.”
One thing the study did not find is evidence of substantial amounts of Russian news sources being shared. “The political conversations on social media exclude a Russian audience group,” the researchers concluded.”
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Added: Study linked above: (#1 on study’s Acknowledgment list is as always, US taxpayers: 1. National Science Foundation (ie US taxpayers), 2. European Research Council, and 3. EPSRC, part of British Research Council, p.6)
p. 6, “Table 3 gives a list of all the junk news sources used for this analysis.” (Breitbart, Drudge, Treehouse, Hot Air, many more)
(Note: I wasn’t able to download the Seed list (.xlxs) link provided)
2/6/18, “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[in Jan. 2018]. 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.”
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“Download here.
Online supplement (.pdf)
Seed list (.xlxs)
Vidya Narayanan, Vlad Barash, John Kelly, Bence Kollanyi, Lisa-Maria Neudert, and Philip N. Howard. “Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US.”
“Download here.
Online supplement (.pdf)
Seed list (.xlxs)
Vidya Narayanan, Vlad Barash, John Kelly, Bence Kollanyi, Lisa-Maria Neudert, and Philip N. Howard. “Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US.”
Data Memo 2018.1. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk
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Comment Two: Definition of “polarization” and “political divide”–If everyone thinks alike you don’t have “polarization” or “political divide.” For example, Establishment Republicans and Democrats agree on the basics: open borders, (ie, the US no longer exists except to tax those who've been converted to global slaves), extreme globalism, Endless Unwinnable US taxpayer funded wars, and massive America Last trade deals.
If you disagree with those basics, if you don’t agree to be a global slave, and you dare to say so, you’re said to be causing “polarization” and “political divide” in the country. They thought they were home free, that we'd agreed to be slaves.
Note that above Guardian article differentiates Republicans from Trump supporters.
“Donald Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee because he won the GOP’s untapped residue of nationalist voters, in a system where the elites of both parties are, as if by rote, extreme globalists. He won the support of those who favored changing trade and immigration policies, which, it is increasingly obvious, do not favor the tangible interests of the average American. He won the backing of those alarmed by a new surge of political correctness, an informal national speech code that seeks to render many legitimate political opinions unsayable….
And he won with backing from the growing group of Republicans who understand that the Iraq War was an unmitigated disaster.
When one examines Trump’s main opponents— Bush and Rubio then, Hillary Clinton now—on the critical issues of immigration (legal and illegal), trade, and Iraq and other military interventions, one finds no substantial differences between them….
On the triad of trade, immigration, and foreign policy these voters are nationalist, not globalist—they would limit America’s intervention in foreign conflicts and subject the importation of products and people from the rest of the world to a more rigorous is-it-good-for-us test. (And by “us” they mean themselves, not the Fortune 500.) By nominating Trump, the Republican Party has finally been forced to come to terms with these sentiments, choosing a candidate who is largely disdainful of the globalist consensus of GOP donors, pundits, and think-tank experts. For Trump and his voters, the “Reaganite” basket of so-called “conservative” issues—free trade,
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Two among comments:
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“bill josephson says: July 1, 2016 at 5:03 pm
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Scott McConnell’s piece is one of the best small, intermediate, and big picture political encapsulation I’ve ever read.
Anyone want to know what’s been going on the last 20-30 years politically in America within the GOP in particular–this is a blue print.
Kudos to Mr McConnell. I look forward to reading anything he presents going forward.”
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“Jim Jatras says: July 4, 2016 at 3:58 pm
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“With one exception, I agree with all that Mr. McConnell writes here, including that Trump probably will win in November.
“With one exception, I agree with all that Mr. McConnell writes here, including that Trump probably will win in November.
My one dissent is the notion that even if Trump loses, the GOP and to some extent the nation, will have been transformed, presumably setting the stage for some
future candidate with a different mix of personal qualities to capitalize on. If Trump loses, yes, the grandees of the party will fault him personally, but even more they will blame Trump’s heresies with respect to neocon-globalist orthodoxies about immigration, trade, and war. Moreover (as NRO’s Kevin Williamson suggests: ‘the Democratic party and its undemocratic “superdelegate” system sure is looking
smart right about now’
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437370/donald-trump-gop-must-say-no-him ),
they will not again make the mistake they made this cycle (comparable to David Cameron’s miscalculation that he could defang the Euroskeptics once and for all by allowing a them a referendum and then beating them). We can be sure that
along with the abuse heaped upon Trump and his departures from the respectable Republican catechism will come structural “reforms” to make sure this never, never
happens again. That’s on top of the fact that the emergence of another candidate with similar populist appeal, as well as Trump’s celebrity status and independent wealth, is not a given.
In short, I reckon this one is for all the marbles. If Trump wins – and I repeat, I think he will – the historic America of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, of Jackson
and Webster, of Grant and Lee, still has at least a temporary reprieve from transforming into Congressman Luis Gutierrez’s “new” ruling political coalition that defines
itself in opposition to America as we’ve known it
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/hispandering-in-miami-flouting-the-presidential-oath/…
If Hillary wins, that fate is near-inevitable. In that event, the revanchist GOP establishment, having reasserted control post-Trump, will be more than happy to play second fiddle to a permanently dominant Democratic Party, with which they share both a consensus on policy fundamentals and donor interests.”
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