Fake News on Twitter Flooded Swing States That Helped Trump Win
Source: Mother Jones
A new study reveals how junk content—including from Russia—hit Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and beyond.
DENISE CLIFTONSEP. 28, 2017 1:00 AM
Millions of tweets were flying furiously in the final days leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. And in closely fought battleground states that would prove key to Donald Trump’s victory, they were more likely than elsewhere in America to be spreading links to fake news and hyper-politicized content from Russian sources and WikiLeaks, according to new research published Thursday by Oxford University.
Nationwide during this period, one polarizing story was typically shared on average for every one story produced by a professional news organization. However, fake news from Twitter reached higher concentrations than the national average in 27 states, 12 of which were swing states—including Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, where Trump won by slim margins.
While it’s unclear what effect such content ultimately had on voters, the new study only deepens concerns about how the 2016 election may have been tweaked by nefarious forces on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. “Many people use these platforms to find news and information that shapes their political identities and voting behavior,” says Samantha Bradshaw, a lead researcher for Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project, which has been tracking disinformation strategies around the world since 2014. “If bad actors can lower the quality of information, they are diminishing the quality of democracy.”
Efforts by Vladimir Putin’s regime were among the polarizing content captured in the new Oxford study. “We know the Russians have literally invested in social media,” Bradshaw told Mother Jones, referring to reports of Russian-bought Facebook ads as well as sophisticated training of Russian disinformation workers detailed in another recent study by the team. “Swing states would be the ones you would want to target.”
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/fake-news-including-from-russian-sources-saturated-battleground-states-trump-barely-won/
= new reply since forum marked as read
They rushed him off stage (a staged response in all probablilty) as a protester was beaten at his behest just days before the election. And, they were able to completely overwhelm the protester beaten story. Jared even falsely turned it into an assassination attempt story to cover for Trump creating the beating. This is the best example I've documented of how they used Twitter to control the news cycle. Of course, it also helped that the guy who was beaten was detained in a men's room for hours, unable to get his version out, and the press was detained in a bullpen for their protection from Trump's frenzied mob. Here's the story at the time:
Man with "Republicans Against Trump" sign beaten at Trump rally, Trump incited fight
... in the name of "fraud prevention" that threw the last election to Trump, not fake news.
If anything the fake news machine blinded us Democrats to what the GOP-Russians were doing last year. The fake news machine made us think that Hillary was winning in the polls, when in fact the fix was in all along. Hillary never had a chance, along with certain other Democratic candidates in certain key states.
Maybe we'll never be able to prove the Russian activities but we certainly know they did it, and we have to make sure they can't do it again. Gerrymandering is the evil underhanded undemocratic re-drawing of the Congressional Districts that the GOP has been doing in every state for the last 30+ years. They've been sly and quiet about it because they knew it would take along time to make a difference, so Democrats didn't pay attention. Now we see the impact of what they've done - in 2016 they stole the election!
Always remember that the GOP can't win unless they cheat. That's why they're always looking for ways to game the system, with gerrymandering, voter suppression, and re-programmed voting machines. In just straight numbers Dems vs. GOP they'll lose every time and they know it. That's why they cheat, and it's probably why they collude with the Russians.
