New Data Memo: “Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US”

The following article and data file from the Project on Computational Propaganda at the University of Oxford was posted online today.
Title
Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US
Authors
Vidya Narayana
Oxford Univeristy
Vlad Barash
Graphika
John Kelly
Graphika
Bence Kollanyi
Oxford Univeristy
Lisa-Maria Neudert
Oxford Univeristy
Philip N. Howard
Oxford Univeristy
Source
Project on Computational Propaganda
Data Memo 2018.1.
University of Oxford
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 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 tha n audiences on Facebook’s public pages.

Resources
Article/Data Memo
6 pages; PDF
Online supplement
9 pages; PDF
Seed List/Sources
.xlsx

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