Headline from the Weekly World News
That’s a pretty provocative title for an article. It reflects my bias, and knowing that, it’s not something I would have written before I knew it was true, but it turns out that I was right. A number of studies have been done that show that Trump supporters in particular are more likely to believe fake news than Liberals. I find that particularly ironic, given that Conservatives on the Internet are the ones who bring up the topic of “fake news” most often.
One study was done at Oxford University, analyzing what news stories Conservatives and Liberals shared on Twitter and Facebook. The study found:
The social networks mapped from public Twitter and Facebook data show that the junk political news and information was concentrated among Trump’s supporters.
and
The Trump Support group … contributes more to the spreading of junk news, compared to all other groups put together.
The careful reader will notice that the Oxford study uses the words “junk political news” rather than “fake news.” The study identified “junk news” as news from sources that consistently publish
political news and information that is extremist, sensationalist, conspiratorial, masked commentary, fake news and other forms of junk news…
The study is a very interesting read and the Conservative / Liberal divide is not the only analysis in it. I guess Trump supporters will call it “fake news.” What do they know?