Trump supporters are among the most prolific social media users spreading fake news and conspiracy content, according to
new research from Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project, which has been studying disinformation campaigns globally since 2014.
The group’s new findings are based on study of more than 13,000 Twitter accounts representing politically diverse viewpoints, including just under 2,000 pro-Trump accounts—which were identified by terms like #MAGA included on their Twitter profiles and explicitly pro-Trump content they have shared. The Oxford researchers found that those pro-Trump accounts, t
hough comprising less than a sixth of the total accounts, were responsible for 55 percent of the “junk news” tweeted out from all 13,000 accounts, studied during the period of October 20, 2017 to January 18, 2018. The researchers also studied content from more than 47,000 public Facebook pages during the same 90-day period;
they determined that about 60 percent of the total “junk news” links were posted by users that appeared to be aligned with the political far right. (The research doesn’t address whether any of these Twitter and Facebook accounts may be controlled by
bots or other deceptive online operators.)
“We find that the political landscape is strikingly divided across ideological lines when it comes to who is sharing junk news,” says Lisa-Maria Neudert, one of the lead researchers for the Oxford group. She says there may be “a silver lining” with the inordinate role of the far right in peddling fake news: It could suggest that most other groups are less susceptible to extremist or conspiratorial content.
On Twitter and Facebook, left-leaning accounts circulated more content from mainstream media sources, while conservative and pro-Trump accounts shared more content from right-wing media and junk news sources.
The researchers defined “junk news” as sources that “deliberately publish misleading, deceptive, or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture.” They compiled a “watch list” of about 100 sites that were observed spreading propaganda and conspiracy content before the 2016 election. The list of junk news sources spans the political spectrum and includes well-known far-right outlets like
Breitbart News and
InfoWars.
What a surprise, the people who oppose knowledge and education and critical thinking are more likely to fall for fake news.