Data shows who was reading “fake news” before 2016 US election

Study tracked browser history of 2,500 Americans.

Read the whole story

 

[Kendokaa]

Something nobody seems to have mentioned so far: Youtube. A lot of people I know don't really read articles online, they watch Youtube videos about the news and other topics. There are more than a handful of large successful channels that constantly spread misinformation (Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Alex Jones until he got banned, Prager U, etc) and as was discussed in the comments of the PragerU article, the Youtube algorithm constantly recommends those channels to people.

Some of them (Crowder) even quote sources and post them in the video description but completely misinterpret the data, knowing their audience will take their word for it, satisfied that they themselves have "done their research" by watching a seemingly well researched video. An example was a video he made about climate change where he talked about data that supposedly showed that glaciers were growing so climate change must be a hoax. Of course the study showed one glacier growing and many others shrinking massively but none of his audience caught that because of course not.

I know multiple people who used to be at best a bit conservative but now believe in the craziest shit specifically because of those channels (just before pizzagate happened, an acquaintance told me enthusiastically something was going to go down, and whaddayaknow, a nutjob shoots up a pizza place and he was happy about it).

There's an NYT article about the radicalisation of young people on Youtube:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... dical.html

They're still very much allowed to post videos and in many cases make money from it, and some of them are bankrolled by rich republicans. Ignoring their prominence in spreading propaganda seems like a mistake.

Edit: Added a paragraph

 

[sheepless]

That somebody named "Andy Guess" became a political scientist is giving me a severe case of the ironic giggles.

Who's on first?

 

[ManuOtaku]

In the mean time, Trump keeps pilling evidence of his obstruction of justice.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21164977/t ... of-justice

 

[gerryq]

Based on the conclusion, people on all sides of the aisle encounter worthless news sources, but overall they keep reading from a majority of credible sources. So maybe "fake news" doesn't cause significant damage, because plenty of credible outlets are available that overshadow it? (Not defending fake news, but just curious if its impact is less than we think.)

Better still, people who encounter "fake news" frequently know that it's a difference of degree. ALL news is partially fake.

 

[JPan]

The untrustworthy newssites that were telling you that
- the piss dossier CNN was peddling was bought for by the Clinton campaign ( which it was)
- the trump campaign was spied on which was put down as a conspiracy theory by all Mainstreams sites ( and which the new York times now agrees )
- that avenatti is criminal while CNN lauded him as a presidential candidate( he is now in prison for half a dozen crimes)
- Eppstein didn't kill himself ( he didn't)
- told you the Russia investigation was pointless while Rachel maddow told ever more crazy conspiracy theories ( which it was there was not even a mention of relations to Russia by trump Anymore)
- the dnc fucked over bernie ( which it did)



When It comes to the Elections the "trustworthy" news soy ces are so biased by now that there is basically no distinction anymore between CNN and Alex Jones talking about pizza gate.

 

[polkiu]

There seems to be a tacit assumption that if people visit a news site, without following through to fact checking, that this means they believed what they read. That may be true for some but it certainly isn't for me. I see crappy journalism all over the place, typically opinion masquerading as fact, selective reporting, and, of course, false narratives.

Fact checking is part of judging the quality of a news report, but it won't necessarily protect you from other forms of corrupt journalism.

There is also the issue with "fact checkers" and those who decide what is fake news. Is NyT/WaPo/whoever is considered the "good guys" in this study fake news for pushing the whole Iraq invasion hysteria? They were obviously publishing complete lies at the time.

Agreed.

Also, what about having "omission checkers". I reckon misleading through omission is far more prevalent today than outright lying.

Both sides do it. I know Fox and others love to play the video/audio of Biden talking about the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor. That is not a lie. But they do not elaborate about the mitigating circumstances, Same effect as a lie - but if you "fact checked" the playing of the video, you would have to say it was "true".

As a famous example on the other side, there is Trump's "very fine people on both sides" comment re the Charlottesville thing. The anti Trump outlets played that particular quote (ad nauseum). Again, it is "true" that he said those words. But he was EXPLICITLY not referring to the pieces os shit with the tiki torches and stuff. He was talking about the two sides of the Civil War monument debate. Look up the entire exchange. Read the transcript. Misleading by omission, without lying. But the fact checker would have to conclude that Trump saying "very fine people on both sides" is true. Like Biden, he said it. It's on tape. The misleading is in the bits they didn't focus on, not the bits they did.

Then there is choice of what to cover, too. It's almost amusing to go from CNN to Fox. They both will be covering entirely different subjects usually. Like if there's good economic news or something good for Trump it'll be all that Fox are talking about. As well as bad things for Dems. And on CNN, they will cover different stories or events. Ones that reflect poorly on Trump. I bet you if you switch them on now, Fox will be covering what Schumer said about the SCOTUS. CNN will be covering COVID-19 and the recent DJIA slippage or something. But neither will directly LIE much.

There are many, many more examples of omission from both sides than outright lying.

Fact Checkers (should) be focusing on whether information is misleading. While there's a strong correlation between how unfactual information is and how misleading it is, as you point out it's not 1:1, and that creates a loop-hole which only increases the prevalence of information that is factual-yet-misinformative. If Fact Checkers only rate information for whether it's true or false they probably become part of the problem of misleading people.

I agree, some of the strongest information "leading" is how the news media pick which stories to report in the first place, not just how they report on them. This area hardly gets any focus, it's not a transparent system at all as to how these organizations pick what to cover. A lot of it will be the dog chasing it's own tail.

 

[ryanmct]

Here's a whimsically written guide that shows how to identify a Russian asset:
How to spot...

 

[dlux]

Wow, did this thread take a change overnight. I wonder what time zone got activated?

 

[dlux]

I think the problem here is that there has always been a racist, naive, intentionally ignorant and conspiracy-minded element in America.

Well now I gotta post this one again (spoiler'd for the weary):

Spoiler

 

[aurispector]

If you watch CNN or read the NYT with even a slightly jaded eye, the first question becomes "what is the definition of "shady news site"?

 

[rabish12]

The Bible is still a thing right?

Not only that; Ayn Rand is still a thing. They're regularly simultaneously things among the most powerful people on the political right.

Necessarily, this means that cognitive dissonance is a thing, which seems to reflect the results here.

Not only that; Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan are still a thing on the radical left:

Obama's Radical-Left Ties Broad And Deep
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamas-rad ... -and-deep/

Cognitive dissonance - for example - believing that political radicals are only on the far right.

No, they kind of aren't a thing "on the radical left".

You only know that Jeremiah Wright exists because he was Obama's pastor. He's not some major figure on the left, he doesn't have millions of people who tune in every week to listen to his words.

As for Louis Farrakhan, the left's pretty consistently disowned him. They not only don't endorse his words, they regularly condemn him and his actions. That's not exactly surprising, because it turns out that Farrakhan isn't really on the left. Like... at all. He's a hyper-religious racial supremacist who runs an organization that's openly against the LGBT community and that holds regressive views about gender. Those are... pretty decidedly not left-wing views.

That out of the way, let's try and compare apples to apples. Can you name someone on the left who a) has radically leftist views on the level of "the government is putting stuff in the water to secretly turn people gay" and b) has a following that even approaches what Alex Jones has?

 

[iLagU]

So the idea that fake news won the US election, was in fact fake news?

As others have already pointed out. Trump one the electoral college by 80,000 votes. That’s possibly the closest win in history. So, a 1% shift in voter perception, due to false information is more than enough to sway an election. 1% is like 550000 votes per party, or over a million combined. And that’s for the people who actually vote. It’s even higher if we count the folks who don’t vote, but still are involved in spreading misinformation. MILLIONS of votes.

Does marketing work? Yes. It makes you buy shut you don’t need, myself included. This is the marketing of false ideas that make us change how we might vote. Simple right?

 

[squidgod]

That stock photo is so odd.

You ain't seen nothing yet: https://www.reddit.com/r/wtfstockphotos/

 

[Skyl3r]

I was curious what (and who) defines a source as "fake news". The researchers say they used this to determine "fake news" sources: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/ ... 5/374.full

This study determines fake news sources are defined as news sources that “lack the news media’s editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information.” Apparently they then used Snopes and a few other academics to determine how "flawed" each source's editorial process was.

So what I've learned from this is "fake news" doesn't mean the news articles contain "fake" information. It means that the news source isn't following editorial norms. Maybe I'm the only one that didn't realize the distinction. But "fake news" does not mean or imply disinformation or misinformation; although there may be overlap. And a "not" fake news source doesn't imply that it publishes no misinformation or disinformation.

 

[diekunstderfuge]

Thanks for posting this study! The more we learn the better.

 

[rabish12]

You only know that Jeremiah Wright exists because he was Obama's pastor. He's not some major figure on the left, he doesn't have millions of people who tune in every week to listen to his words.

I think what bothers people, is we have video of Obama sitting in the pews bobbing his head and clapping hands in agreement with those Sermons, and never once do we see him stand up and challenge Write on anything he ever said.

The logical takeaway from that is --

1) He's compliant and cowardly, or

2) He agrees with Wright's message and doesn't see any reason to challenge him.

Link me the video of Obama "sitting in the pews bobbing his head and clapping hands in agreement with those Sermons", because I can't find it. Hell, I even went to Conservapedia's article on him and the best that they could do was pretty much the opposite:

"Barack Obama claims that he didn't know that Jeremiah Wright held hateful sermons but went to the church for at least several years."

So where did you see this video? Or did you see a video of Obama at a sermon and just assume?

 

[jgershon]

The spike on the right side of the chart is not really unexpected. What I find really interesting is the shape of the rest of it. There are several features of note:
- Excluding the crazy ends, there is a clear downward trend in visiting fake news sites as you go from the liberal end to the conservative end
- The conservative-crazy end jumps way up compared to moderate conservatives, while the liberal-crazy end actually goes down compared to moderate liberals
- Both sides are visiting a lot of the other side's sites, and almost everyone visits Trump-supporting fake-news sites more often than Clinton-supporting ones.

I'd be interested to see more investigation of these phenomena.

 

[stine]

So are the right-wingers online who do nothing but regurgitate and create their own propaganda all Russian trolls?

No, in Canada I’m aware of several very popular fake news Facebook groups called <something> Proud|Strong, beginning with Ontario Proud, that are run by former Conservative Party staffers. These groups exclusively target the federal and provincial Liberal Parties of Canada, using a mix of roughly 80% misleading negative political memes and 20% non-partisan patriotic memes. As far as I can tell these groups are homegrown but indistinguishable from Russian trolls.

There is nothing of even remotely similar size from the left (hundreds of thousands of members for a province of a few million).

I think that's because the Left promising everyone free stuff doesn't actually necessitate propaganda, it just requires that there are still enough people paying taxes to pay for that free stuff.

 

[dlux]

I think that's because the Left promising everyone free stuff doesn't actually necessitate propaganda, it just requires that there are still enough people paying taxes to pay for that free stuff.

 

[fredsbend]

I don't remember progressives/Democrats being such hardnoses about Russia when President Reagan was winning the Cold War. In fact they were purring pussycats towards Russia, or, in the case of Senator Ted Kennedy, energetically backstabbing his policy.

Because politicians are duplicitous ass biscuits.

 

[MagicDot]

My confirmation bias that Trump voters would be more likely to read confirmation bias fake new has been confirmed.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

I'm overcome with joy at the refusal to engage the troll-in-training.

Thanks, all!

 

[54R124G43B]

Anybody know where can we find the blacklist of fake new sites that they used for their research? I don't see it in the full text PDF, but maybe someone here knows and can give me a hint to help find it myself? Maybe the list isn't actually public?

 

[dlux]

I'm overcome with joy at the refusal to engage the troll-in-training.

You're still in training? I thought you'd have graduated to at least Junior Shitposter by now.


You know, instead of "Ars Legionis Conquistador Al Dente" or whatever pompous titles they give us, I'd prefer to see our status reflected in the ratio of up/downvotes we've received over our posting careers.

I'd probably be in the 'Probation' category by now.

 

[ArsCannon]

Maybe a silly question that was answered before, but how was this data gathered? Sounds like whoever participated had to submit their browser history, no? That alone would limit the pool of individuals to a significant degree.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

I'm overcome with joy at the refusal to engage the troll-in-training.

You're still in training? I thought you'd have graduated to at least Junior Shitposter by now.

Rent grace period ends TODAY!!

 

[rabish12]

Maybe a silly question that was answered before, but how was this data gathered? Sounds like whoever participated had to submit their browser history, no? That alone would limit the pool of individuals to a significant degree.

I didn't read the study, but I highly doubt I am the only one that would take issue with researchers parsing my browser history. How did they select the allegedly random sample of browser histories.

It was a YouGov survey group with some sort of installed data logger.

 

[fredsbend]

The 1619 Project has been sharply criticized by leading American historians, most notably, historian of the American Revolution Gordon Wood and Civil War experts Richard Carwardine and James McPherson. McPherson stated in an interview that he was "disturbed" by the project's "unbalanced, one-sided account, which lacked context and perspective on the complexity of slavery, which was clearly, obviously, not an exclusively American institution, but existed throughout history."

The 1619 Project - Critical Response - Wikipedia

It's been criticized enough by legitimate historians that it has its own massive critical response section on wikipedia. That quote is just the first few sentences. The lack of objectivity has been further criticized by fellow journalists. From a big NYT fan, it has been sorely disappointing to see them head in this direction.

 

[Dzov]

In the mean time, Trump keeps pilling evidence of his obstruction of justice.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21164977/t ... of-justice

What are you talking about? Trump just let us know the impeachment was a hoax a few days ago.



/s

 

[dlux]

Trump just let us know the impeachment was a hoax a few days ago.

It's been that long? I thought it was an hourly thing.

 

[Infinity4011]

So Cambridge Analytica develops a method of spamming news to the undecided and this research arrives at a conclusion that conservatives accounted for many more clicks. We know from the Netflix documentary that CA was enlisted by Trump's campaign after Hillary wouldn't pay for CA's services.

If this research isn't a ringing endorsement of the effectiveness of Cambridge Analytica's methods, I don't know what is. They targeted individuals with the intent of swaying them to vote for their customer. To the research, the clicks represent how well it worked. To the biases in political ideology, a self feedback loop metric of the targeted campaigns.

I don't think one can actively draw conclusion when we know for a fact that CA was actively manipulating the market at millions scale. No way a sample size of 2500 could hope to account for the effect.

It's well known that Steve Bannon was a VP for Cambridge Analytica. There's no way CA would've ever done anything for Hillary Clinton, unless it was to undermine her from the inside. The spider's web of threads that connect Cambridge Analytica, The Trump campaign, Putin, and the Brexit campaign is deeply tied to Steve Bannon and a couple of other people.