Trump supporters and extreme right ‘share widest range of junk news’

A network of Donald Trump supporters shares the widest range of ‘junk news’ on Twitter, and a network of extreme far-right conservatives on Facebook, according to analysis by Oxford University.

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) analysed three months of social media activity of US Twitter and Facebook users from November 2017 to January 2018 – the period leading up to President Trump’s latest State of the Union Address.

They find that on Twitter, a network of Trump supporters shares the widest range of junk news and circulates more junk news than all other political audience groups combined.

On Facebook, extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – both share the widest range and circulate the largest volume of junk news compared with all the other audiences. Specifically, a group of ‘hard conservatives’ circulates the widest range of junk news and accounts for the majority of junk news traffic in the sample.

Junk news sources are defined as deliberately publishing misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture. This type of content can include various forms of extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial material, as well as masked commentary and fake news.

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