An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. CONT. John Markoff, New York Times Read more »
The forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse
One way to think of the job journalism does is telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s victory came as such a surprise — a systemic shock, really — to both journalists and so many who read […] Read more »
Voters Increasingly Turning to Internet for Information, Survey Shows
Voters have stepped away from the television and are digesting the presidential and Senate races through the internet, a new poll of persuadable voters in five Senate battleground states shows. The survey, conducted by the Global Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, showed that […] Read more »
Trump’s Twitter debate lead was ‘swelled by bots’
More than four times as many tweets were made by automated accounts in favour of Donald Trump around the first US presidential debate as by those backing Hillary Clinton, a study found. … The investigation was led by Prof Philip Howard, from the University of Oxford, and is part of a […] Read more »
Putting post-debate ‘flash polls’ into perspective
Prize fights and Olympic contests have judges, but debates between candidates for public office in the U.S. are ultimately judged by the voters. In the aftermath of presidential debates, there is intense interest in gauging “who won.” How can we know the answer to that question? CONT. Scott Keeter, Pew Read more »
Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine
… Facebook, in the years leading up to this election, hasn’t just become nearly ubiquitous among American internet users; it has centralized online news consumption in an unprecedented way. According to the company, its site is used by more than 200 million people in the United States each month, out […] Read more »