- \n
- The sites do not share a political point of view. They are dominated by the far\u00a0right, but they also include the far left, hate groups, nationalists, and Russian propaganda sites. They did strongly overlap in being anti-globalist, anti-science, and anti-mainstream media.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/03\/8.png\")
<\/p>\n- \n
- Fake news sites are highly repetitive, spreading the same conspiracies and lies, often re-posting identical content\u00a0on multiple sites.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Users, then, aren’t necessarily being careless or undisciplined in their information gathering. They often tweet overlapping content from several different fake news sites, suggesting that they are obeying a hallmark of media literacy: seeking out multiple sources. You can see the dense network created by this use of multiple data sources in the upper left.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/03\/7.png\")
<\/p>\n- \n
- One of the main conspiracy stories promulgated by fake news sites is that the real news is fake.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Believing this, Twitter users who share links to fake news sites often also share links to traditional news outlets (see the connections in the network to the Washington Post<\/em>, for example),\u00a0but they do so primarily as evidence that their false belief was true. When\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports the mainstream story about the mass shooting, for instance, it is argued to be\u00a0proof of a cover up. This is consistent with the backfire effect<\/a>: exposure\u00a0to facts tends to strengthen belief in misinformation rather than undermine it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In an interview with the Seattle Times<\/em><\/a>, Starbird expresses distress at her findings.\u00a0“I used to be a techno-utopian,” she explained, but she is now deeply worried about the “menace of unreality.”\u00a0Emerging research<\/a> suggests that believing in\u00a0one conspiracy theory is a risk factor for believing in another. Individuals drawn to these sites out of a concern with the safety of vaccines, for example, may come out with\u00a0a belief in a Clinton-backed pedophilia ring, a global order controlled by Jews, and an aversion to the only cure for misinformation: truth. “There really is an information war for your mind,” Starbird concluded. “And we\u2019re losing it.”<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Fake news” has emerged as a substantial problem for\u00a0democracy. The circulation of false narratives, lies, and conspiracy\u00a0theories on self-described “alternative news” sites undercuts the knowledge voters rely on to make political\u00a0decisions. Sometimes the spread of this misinformation is deliberate, spread by hate groups, foreign governments, or individuals bent on harming the US. A new study […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":70144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2104,129,23624,20059,85,234,20068,693],"class_list":["post-70140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-knowledgeintelligence","tag-media","tag-media-newsopinion","tag-media-social-media","tag-politics","tag-democracy","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-public-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/03\/9.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70140"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70150,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70140\/revisions\/70150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Believing this, Twitter users who share links to fake news sites often also share links to traditional news outlets (see the connections in the network to the Washington Post<\/em>, for example),\u00a0but they do so primarily as evidence that their false belief was true. When\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports the mainstream story about the mass shooting, for instance, it is argued to be\u00a0proof of a cover up. This is consistent with the backfire effect<\/a>: exposure\u00a0to facts tends to strengthen belief in misinformation rather than undermine it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- One of the main conspiracy stories promulgated by fake news sites is that the real news is fake.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Users, then, aren’t necessarily being careless or undisciplined in their information gathering. They often tweet overlapping content from several different fake news sites, suggesting that they are obeying a hallmark of media literacy: seeking out multiple sources. You can see the dense network created by this use of multiple data sources in the upper left.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Fake news sites are highly repetitive, spreading the same conspiracies and lies, often re-posting identical content\u00a0on multiple sites.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n