Now Available: Weekly Misinformation Briefing (10/5/20) From Computational Propaganda Project (COMPROP)/Oxford Internet Institute

The Weekly Misinformation Briefing (October 5, 2020) was written by:

• Hubert Au
• Jonathan Bright
• Philip N. Howard

From the Report’s Summary:

• The social media distribution network of all articles from the top fifteen mainstream news outlets reached just below three billion social media users this week, achieving much greater distribution than state-backed and junk news sources. But the average article from state-backed sources reached over 7,500 users, while the average article from mainstream sources reached over 4,500 users and the average junk health article reached over 2,300 users.
• Similarly, aggregate content from mainstream sources gets the largest amount of total user engagement. However, on a per article basis,state-backed news receives over 600 engagements and junk news receives just below 1,700, while average articles from mainstream sources get over 300 engagements.
• The most prominent junk news and state-backed topics, in descending order, were the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the US Supreme Court, the attribution of violence to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the political left, the first US Presidential debate, and China’s role in climate change.

Direct to Full Text Report
5 pages; PDF.

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