Ecosystem or Echo-System? Exploring Content Sharing across Alternative Media Domains

Abstract

This research examines the competing narratives about the role and function of Syria Civil Defence, a volunteer humanitarian organization popularly known as the White Helmets, working in war-torn Syria. Using a mixed-method approach based on seed data collected from Twitter, and then extending out to the websites cited in that data, we examine content sharing practices across distinct media domains that functioned to construct, shape, and propagate these narratives. We articulate a predominantly alternative media “echo-system” of websites that repeatedly share content about the White Helmets. Among other findings, our work reveals a small set of websites and authors generating content that is spread across diverse sites, drawing audiences from distinct communities into a shared narrative. This analysis also reveals the integration of government-funded media and geopolitical think tanks as source content for anti-White Helmets narratives. More broadly, the analysis demonstrates the role of alternative newswire-like services in providing content for alternative media websites. Though additional work is needed to understand these patterns over time and across topics, this paper provides insight into the dynamics of this multi-layered media ecosystem.

No Calm in the Storm: Investigating QAnon Website Relationships

“…We crawl these 189 misinformation domains from February to April 2021. Examples of misinformation domains include Breitbart, Globalresearch, and Unz, all of which have played a role in spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation online (Starbird et al 2018a). This set of misinformation domains has connections with 202K other domains in our hyperlink graph.…”

“…Finally, we show that there is a strong connection between QAnon websites and authentic and misinformation news sources. While QAnon sites regularly link to both types of content, typically only misinformation websites (e.g., americanthinker.com, freepublic.com, and thegatewaypundit.com) directly reference QAnon sites, adding to the wealth of evidence that sites like these contribute to toxic political "echo-chambers" (Starbird et al 2018a). Building on this observation, we demonstrate how features derived from our QAnon-based hyperlink graph can be used to identify misinformation more broadly.…”

Erving Goffman on Misinformation and Information Control: The Conduct of Contemporary Russian Information Operations

“…For example, the account reposted statements from the official Instagram account for the Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic and Ramzan Kadyrov (the Head of the Chechen Republic and currently sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act for involvement in repression, torture and murder)-not something typical for your average anime fan! It also posted explicit disinformation messages attacking the work of the White Helmets in Syria, a key focus of the Kremlin around this time (Starbird et al 2018). There were also periodic posts involving repeated tagging of pro-Russian words, such as #VladimirPutin.…”

Characterizing the Social Media News Sphere through User Co-Sharing Practices

“…Opposing the view of a politically polarized audience, recent studies suggest that the dualism between conservative and liberal stances is increasingly less relevant in the social news sphere (Starbird 2017;Guess et al 2018;Druckman, Levendusky, and McLain 2018). In particular, these studies show that groups of news producers employ mechanisms that are yet to be studied deeply to influence their readers (Horne and Adali 2018;Starbird et al 2018).…”

“…Furthermore, we rely on source-level assessments of news, although different articles by one same source might have different qualities. One exemple is RT, which shares a combination of high-quality news reports and state propaganda (Starbird et al 2018). This choice is in line with our goal of studying the audience of news sources, as we focus on the aggregate characteristics of the news media sphere.…”