Fake news sharing in US is a rightwing thing, says study

[smilesammich 10,727]

Quote

University of Oxford project finds Trump supporters consume largest volume of ‘junk news’ on Facebook and Twitter

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.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/sharing-fake-news-us-rightwing-study-trump-university-of-oxford

 

cue alanis morrisette..

[jg121783 3,915]

The question here is who is defining what fake news is and what are their criteria for classifying it as fake news? Seem like there is a lot of room for bias in this "study".

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, jg121783 said:

The question here is who is defining what fake news is and what are their criteria for classifying it as fake news? Seem like there is a lot of room for bias in this "study".

pretty sure fake news is defined as news that is not factual. pretty easy to classify. 

[jg121783 3,915]

1 minute ago, smilesammich said:

pretty sure fake news is defined as news that is not factual. pretty easy to classify. 

So liars like CNN are on the fake news list then? Didn't think so.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

5 minutes ago, jg121783 said:

The question here is who is defining what fake news is and what are their criteria for classifying it as fake news? Seem like there is a lot of room for bias in this "study".

A Liberal University study that blasts Trump voters. Its got to be true LOL

[jg121783 3,915]

Just now, Nature Boy Flair said:

A Liberal University study that blasts Trump voters. Its got to be true LOL

I think they got their fake news list from snopes. The highly credible cat lady in an apartment.

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, jg121783 said:

So liars like CNN are on the fake news list then? Didn't think so.

 i don't often see trump supporters share cnn articles on fb or twitter. i don't pay attention to cnn myself.

[smilesammich 10,727]

3 minutes ago, Nature Boy Flair said:

A Liberal University study that blasts Trump voters. Its got to be true LOL

a liberal university? it's oxford not ucla.

[jg121783 3,915]

The fact of the matter is this doesn't qualify as a study but rather an opinion piece. The criteria for classifying news outlets as fake news is highly subjective.

[smilesammich 10,727]

2 minutes ago, jg121783 said:

The fact of the matter is this doesn't qualify as a study but rather an opinion piece. The criteria for classifying news outlets as fake news is highly subjective.

better tell oxford they don't know what they're doing.

[Dashinka 24,492]

6 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

better tell oxford they don't know what they're doing.

I don't think he said that.

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, Bill & Katya said:

I don't think he said that.

what do you think he said? 

[jg121783 3,915]

26 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

better tell oxford they don't know what they're doing.

I don't care where the so called study was done if they classify any news outlet as fake news without first defining what fake news is and providing facts to back up their assertion that each one of the outlets they classify as fake news are indeed fake news all it is is an opinion. You can't base a study solely on opinions.

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, jg121783 said:

I don't care where the so called study was done if they classify any news outlet as fake news without first defining what fake news is and providing facts to back up their assertion that each one of the outlets they classify as fake news are indeed fake news all it is is an opinion. You can't base a study solely on opinions.

since you've got such an opinion on the study and how they classified what, etc..i assume you've read the study for yourself?

[Boiler 45,481]

Did not realise CNN et al were right wing.

 

So which ones are left wing?