Illuminating an Ecosystem of Partisan Websites
Illuminating an Ecosystem of Partisan Websites
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DOI：
10.1145/3184558.3188725
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发表时间：
2018-03
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Bhatt;Sagar Joglekar;S. Bano;Nishanth R. Sastry
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文献类型：
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作者：
S. Bhatt;Sagar Joglekar;S. Bano;Nishanth R. Sastry
本文旨在揭示在2016年美国总统大选期间，被认为通过虚假和/或有偏见的新闻报道影响了观点和信仰的另类新闻媒体生态系统。我们研究了一个庞大的，专业策划的668个超党派网站及其相应的Facebook页面列表，并确定了在这个生态系统中调解流量的关键特征。我们发现了一种新网站在选举前建立起来，然后在选举后被放弃的模式。这样的网站形成了一个生态系统，创建了从一个网站到另一个网站的链接，并通过“喜欢”彼此的Facebook页面。这些做法在以高度党派的方式引导生态系统内部的用户流量方面非常有效，右倾网站链接并喜欢其他右倾网站，类似的左倾网站链接到其他左边的网站，从而在新闻生产者之间形成一个过滤泡沫，类似于在党派新闻的消费者中广泛观察到的过滤泡沫。虽然左倾和右倾的网站都有活动，但右倾的网站更进化，占了不成比例的被遗弃网站和党派内部链接的数量。我们还研究了极端党派新闻消费者的人口特征，发现美国一些人口较多的人口群体往往是更右倾网站的消费者。
This paper aims to shed light on alternative news media ecosystems that are believed to have influenced opinions and beliefs by false and/or biased news reporting during the 2016 US Presidential Elections. We examine a large, professionally curated list of 668 hyper-partisan websites and their corresponding Facebook pages, and identify key characteristics that mediate the traffic flow within this ecosystem. We uncover a pattern of new websites being established in the run up to the elections, and abandoned after. Such websites form an ecosystem, creating links from one website to another, and by 'liking' each others' Facebook pages. These practices are highly effective in directing user traffic internally within the ecosystem in a highly partisan manner, with right-leaning sites linking to and liking other right-leaning sites and similarly left-leaning sites linking to other sites on the left, thus forming a filter bubble amongst news producers similar to the filter bubble which has been widely observed among consumers of partisan news. Whereas there is activity along both left- and right-leaning sites, right-leaning sites are more evolved, accounting for a disproportionate number of abandoned websites and partisan internal links. We also examine demographic characteristics of consumers of hyper partisan news and find that some of the more populous demographic groups in the US tend to be consumers of more right-leaning sites.