阐明党派网站的生态系统
Illuminating an Ecosystem of Partisan Websites
摘要：
本文旨在揭示另类新闻媒体生态系统，这些生态系统被认为在2016年美国总统大选期间通过虚假和/或有偏见的新闻报道影响了人们的观点和信念。我们研究了668个超党派网站及其相应的Facebook页面的大型专业策划列表，并确定了调解该生态系统内流量的关键特征。我们发现了一种模式，即在选举前建立新网站，然后在选举后放弃。这些网站形成了一个生态系统，从一个网站到另一个网站建立链接，并通过“喜欢”彼此的Facebook页面。这些做法在以高度党派性的方式在生态系统内部引导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，类似地左倾网站链接到左侧的其他网站，从而在新闻制作者之间形成过滤气泡，类似于在党派新闻的消费者中广泛观察到的过滤气泡。虽然左倾和右倾网站都有活动，但右倾网站更进化，占被遗弃网站和党派内部链接的比例不成比例。我们还研究了超党派新闻消费者的人口统计特征，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。
英文摘要：
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.
机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来，可能存在错误，请以论文正文为准。
