Research note: The spread of political misinformation on online subcultural platforms

Burton, Anthony; Koehorst, Dimitri

doi:10.37016/mr-2020-40

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…However, virtually no prior work can speak comprehensively to the consumption side of pink slime journalism. Burton & Koehorst (2020) provide information about whether pink slime websites are linked to on social media platforms, but their analysis only covers Reddit and 4chan. Bengani (2019) provides evidence that some pink slime websites appeared in Google search results at one point in time, but we have yet to learn who or how many people may have clicked on them.…”

Section: Pink Slime: Production and Consumption Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been several journalistic pieces written on pink slime news outlets and the networks which operate them (Alba & Bloomberg, 2022;Alba & Nicas, 2020;Bengani, 2019Bengani, , 2020Bengani, , 2021David, 2022;Kasprak et al, 2019;McDonald, 2020), as well as a small number of academic studies (Burton & Koehorst, 2020;Cohen, 2015;Royal & Napoli, 2022). These projects have primarily focused on the production side of pink slime journalism -for instance, identifying news organizations that can be considered pink slime (Alba & Nicas, 2020;Bengani, 2020) and documenting their practices (Bengani, 2021;Monacelli, 2022).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Consumption of Pink Slime Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

Moore¹,

Dahlke²,

Bengani³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Pink slime journalism refers to organizations that masquerade as local news outlets, often publishing hyperpartisan and inflammatory articles that serve special interests. While past research has illuminated the production of pink slime journalism (e.g., identifying pink slime outlets, documenting their practices) and detailed pink slime’s potential impacts, virtually no work to date has reported the consumption of pink slime journalism. In this paper, we combine web browsing behavior from a nationally representative sample of American adults collected during the 2020 election (N = 1,238; 21 million website visits) with a database of websites of pink slime outlets (1,627 outlets and 132,237 distinct articles) to document Americans’ consumption of pink slime journalism. Our analysis reveals that just 3.7% of Americans were exposed to pink slime in the months surrounding the 2020 election, and exposure among those exposed was limited. Pink slime consumption differed considerably from the consumption patterns of both misinformation and local news websites, two conceptually related content types. We also find mismatch between production and consumption, with the topics of produced and promoted pink slime articles differing greatly from the topics of those actually consumed. Despite ample speculation, those residing in news deserts were not more likely to consume pink slime. We discuss new questions posed by these pink slime exposure dynamics and how our findings contribute to journalism and communication research more broadly.

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Section: Pink Slime: Production and Consumption Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Consumption of Pink Slime Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

Moore¹,

Dahlke²,

Bengani³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent work supports the importance of modifying algorithm design in general. Across platforms as diverse as X [65], Youtube [66], and Amazon [67], content algorithms have been observed to increase the prominence of misinformation in users' feeds and search results ince the online news ecosystem is an interconnected network of different platforms, if even one platform deploys algorithms that amplify misinformation, then cross-platform traffic can cause users of all platforms to encounter algorithmically amplified misinformation [68].…”

Section: Intervening On Human-algorithm Interactions To Combat Misinf...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-Algorithm Interactions Help Explain the Spread of Misinformation

McLoughlin,

Brady

2023

Preprint

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Human attention biases toward moral and emotional information are as prevalent online as they are offline. When these biases interact with content algorithms that curate social media users’ news feeds to maximize attentional capture, moral and emotional information are privileged in the online information ecosystem. We review evidence for these human-algorithm interactions and argue that misinformation exploits this process to spread online. This framework suggests that interventions aimed at combating misinformation require a dual-pronged approach that combines person-centered and design-centered interventions to be most effective. We suggest several avenues for research in the psychological study of misinformation sharing under a framework of human-algorithm interaction.

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“…Scant amounts of problematic sources were found but like in previous research copious YouTube links were identified, which led to the inquiry into whether YouTubers from the alternative influence network are significantly present in those online cultures. The alternative influence network is described here as a set of YouTube channels fluctuating between “news and personality-centric vlogging, spreading misinformation-laden commentary” ( Burton and Koehorst, 2020 ). Indeed, many of these channels were found between the boards and subreddits under study, though their presence was unequally distributed.…”

Section: Chan and Reddit: Referencing Extreme Youtube Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marginalizing the Mainstream: How Social Media Privilege Political Information

Rogers

2021

Front. Big Data

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The following reports on research undertaken concerning the “misinformation problem” on social media during the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections in 2020. Employing techniques borrowed from data journalism, it develops a form of cross-platform analysis that is attuned to both commensurability as well as platform specificity. It analyses the most engaged-with or top-ranked political content on seven online platforms: TikTok, 4chan, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google Web Search. Discussing the extent to which social media platforms marginalize mainstream media and mainstream the fringe, the analyses found that TikTok parodies mainstream media, 4chan and Reddit dismiss it and direct users to alternative influencer networks and extreme YouTube content. Twitter prefers the hyperpartisan over it. Facebook’s “fake news” problem also concerns declining amounts of mainstream media referenced. Instagram has influencers (rather than, say, experts) dominating user engagement. By comparison, Google Web Search buoys the liberal mainstream (and sinks conservative sites), but generally gives special interest sources, as they were termed in the study, the privilege to provide information rather than official sources. The piece concludes with a discussion of source and “platform criticism”, concerning how online platforms are seeking to filter the content that is posted or found there through increasing editorial intervention. These “editorial epistemologies”, applied especially around COVID-19 keywords, are part of an expansion of so-called content moderation to what I call “serious queries”, or keywords that return official information. Other epistemological strategies for editorially moderating the misinformation problem are also treated.

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Research note: The spread of political misinformation on online subcultural platforms

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

The Consumption of Pink Slime Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

The Consumption of Pink Slime Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

Human-Algorithm Interactions Help Explain the Spread of Misinformation

Marginalizing the Mainstream: How Social Media Privilege Political Information

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