Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda

[yallerdawg]

Joy Reid!

Source: Columbia Journalism Review, by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman

The 2016 Presidential election shook the foundations of American politics. Media reports immediately looked for external disruption to explain the unanticipated victory—with theories ranging from Russian hacking to “fake news.”

We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.

Fig. 1: Media sources shared on Twitter during the election (nodes sized in proportion to Twitter shares).




Fig. 2: Media sources shared on Twitter during the election (nodes sized in proportion to Facebook shares).

What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible.

Use of disinformation by partisan media sources is neither new nor limited to the right wing, but the insulation of the partisan right-wing media from traditional journalistic media sources, and the vehemence of its attacks on journalism in common cause with a similarly outspoken president, is new and distinctive.

Rebuilding a basis on which Americans can form a shared belief about what is going on is a precondition of democracy, and the most important task confronting the press going forward. Our data strongly suggest that most Americans, including those who access news through social networks, continue to pay attention to traditional media, following professional journalistic practices, and cross-reference what they read on partisan sites with what they read on mass media sites.

Much, much more at: http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php?utm_content=buffer36ed1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Bill USA]

1. CJR media analysis. important reading!

"By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible."

as Al Gore put it: "the right wing echo chamber"

[SharonAnn]

2. Vast right-wing conspiracy. Read "The Hunting of the President'. It's truly scary.

And the right-wing media is even more effective now.

[Bill USA]

3. Yes, read it when it came out. Another good one: The Republican Noise Machine - Brock, also:

Blinded by the Right - Brock.. these are great books written by a former Republican writer/hit-man.

Brock later realized he was living a lie, in more ways than one, and realized being a Right-Wing Hit-man was part of his inauthentic life. He became one of the leading debunkers of RW Big Lies and propaganda creating Media Matters, and later, Share Blue.

For the latest on RW Propaganda efforts see: Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire Trump supporter waging war on mainstream media

[dalton99a]

4. +1