Now Available: Weekly Misinformation Briefing (10/12/20) From Computational Propaganda Project (COMPROP)/Oxford Internet Institute

The Weekly Misinformation Briefing (October 12, 2020) was written by:

• Hubert Au
• Jonathan Bright
• Philip N. Howard

From the Summary of the Report:

• 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 8,000 users, while the average article from mainstream sources reached over 4,700 users and the average junk health article reached over 2,500 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 400engagements and junk news receives over 1,400, while average articles from mainstream sources get over 300 engagements
• The most prominent junk news and state-backed topics, in descending order, were President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, perceived violence by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and the political left, the Chinese Golden Week national holiday and China’s economic recovery, and the first US Presidential debate.

Direct to Full Text Report
5 pages; PDF.

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