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Steve Bannon may be gone from the Oval Office, but Breitbart, where he landed on his feet, loomed large in defeating our Hillary Clinton online offensive in 2016. Those of us on the social media campaign bus tried our best to get Hillary Clinton’s message out. When you look at the first few graphics in this report, you may be stunned, as I was, at how little media attention her issues received.

The study illuminates the degree to which opposing sides used social media differently – and postulates as to why. It also shows which major media sources played important roles and how we, the electorate, used them. That Breitbart even figured in as “major” came as a surprise to me.

I am neither a data analyst nor a campaign strategist. I am not sure what we could have done differently based on the results of this study. What I do see is that we failed to battle the Breitbart offensive effectively. It was astoundingly successful. Click on the upper right link on the page to download the full pdf text.

Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Title: Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Author: Benkler, Yochai; Roberts, Hal; Faris, Robert M.; Etling, Bruce; Zuckerman, Ethan; Bourassa, NikkiNote: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors.
Citation: Faris, Robert M., Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler. 2017. Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Paper.
Full Text & Related Files:
Abstract: In this study, we analyze both mainstream and social media coverage of the 2016 United States presidential election. We document that the majority of mainstream media coverage was negative for both candidates, but largely followed Donald Trump’s agenda: when reporting on Hillary Clinton, coverage primarily focused on the various scandals related to the Clinton Foundation and emails. When focused on Trump, major substantive issues, primarily immigration, were prominent. Indeed, immigration emerged as a central issue in the campaign and served as a defining issue for the Trump campaign.

We find that the structure and composition of media on the right and left are quite different. The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism.

Our data supports lines of research on polarization in American politics that focus on the asymmetric patterns between the left and the right, rather than studies that see polarization as a general historical phenomenon, driven by technology or other mechanisms that apply across the partisan divide.

The analysis includes the evaluation and mapping of the media landscape from several perspectives and is based on large-scale data collection of media stories published on the web and shared on Twitter.

Read the full report – click the Download Full Text link >>>>

There were stories here that I never encountered, e.g. the one about immigrants with “blistering STDs.”

There are lessons here. Maybe our team did not spend enough time in the slime of the opposition websites to battle their disgusting lies. We thought the opposition, like us, actually accessed traditional sources, which, as the study shows, did not give Hillary’s issues any kind of fair hearing because, you know, her emails!

I must thank Jen Michigander for sharing this study with me. She is the intrepid one who has spent a lot of time moving among the shadows at the opposition pages.

 

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What kind of decaf have morning media pundits been drinking for the past year? Why are they acting like they awoke in a stupor this morning in the wake of that presser at Trump Tower yesterday? How did they not know that this is who Donald Trump is and that he is not going to change? On “Morning Joe” someone even used the word “mourning.” Really? How is it that you all failed to predict this?

Why is this a question?

This time last year Andrea Mitchell was obsessed with Hillary’s emails and coughing spells. She was not alone. They all were!  Maybe that is why they missed Hillary’s speech in Reno on August 25, 2016 when she issued a strong warning about what Trump was doing and what his presidency would look like.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

SNIP

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough. But what he’s doing here is more sinister. Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

And that’s what I want to make clear today: A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. Ask yourself, if he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know that some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

Because after all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for president – could really believe all the things he says.

But here’s the hard truth, there is no other Donald Trump. This is it.

And Maya Angelou, a great American who I admire very much, she once said: ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. And I think we should believe him.

She went on to enumerate instances when the Department of Justice filed charges of discrimination against Trump and remarks he made on the campaign trail regarding a variety of minority groups. She warned.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name ‘white-genocide-TM.’ Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on white supremacist websites.

The Trump campaign has also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. And they only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

You remember, he said that thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

Yesterday, Trump told the press and the American people that there were people “very quietly” protesting the removal of a statue. That did not happen, either. He told us he saw things that we did not, and at one point he told us what we know and what we think.

If the pundits had listened to Hillary instead of worrying about her cough which turned out to be pneumonia, perhaps they would not be so stunned and astounded today.  Perhaps they might have worried more about Trump’s mental status than about Hillary’s temporary, curable cough.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference, or doesn’t care to, between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors. Someone so detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

That is yet another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, I hear and I read some people who are saying that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention. But look at his policies. The ones that Trump has proposed, they would put prejudice into practice.

SNIP

the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces ‘ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right.’ This is not conservatism as we have known it, this is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant, anti-women –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’

Now, Alt-Right is short for ‘Alternative Right.’ The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loose, but organized movement, mostly online, that ‘rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.’

So the de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group. A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

SNIP

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant. ‘We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,’ one white supremacist said. Duke laughed. ‘No, there’s still more work to do,’ he replied.

So no one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed. Racists now call themselves ‘racialists.’ White supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists.’ The paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right.’ But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. But don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says ‘Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.’

But we know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to ‘make America great again,’ but more and more it seems as though his real message seems to be ‘Make America hate again.’

And this isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation. It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you see Trump rant on television, think about all the children listening across America. Kids hear a lot more than we think.

Another year of school is starting and parents have to worry about how safe it is for their kids to listen to the president speak! Teachers are unsure as to how they can approach a current events unit.

This morning many media pundits seemed to be suffering that post-adrenaline hangover we all feel after a shock. If they had listened to Hillary last year they might not have been so surprised. In fact, perhaps they would not have been complicit in drowning out her message and her substantial plans to improve everybody’s shot at the American Dream. Instead, they ignored those policy speeches. They are shocked. Shocked. That a POTUS would defend Nazis and the KKK.  Are they woke now? The jury is out.

You can read Hillary’s entire Reno speech here >>>>

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Folks at Grand Central Terminal in New York saw and heard Hillary at a Stamp Dedication for Oscar de la Renta, yesterday. It was a government event sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service.  But at least one person in the White House in Washington DC seemed haunted by her presence there.

This is from the New York Times morning brief.

Trump’s Words, By the Numbers

By CARL HULSE

President Trump is clearly obsessed with numbers — the size of his Electoral College win, the number of people at his inauguration, the tally of jobs he is helping keep in the United States. The list goes on.

Given his predilection for digits, here are a few interesting ones from his extremely unconventional news conference on Thursday.

2: The number of times he mentioned the name Acosta at an event that started with the announcement of R. Alexander Acosta as his new nominee for secretary of labor. The other time Mr. Trump mentioned the name was when he called on Jim Acosta of CNN and noted that in picking the other Acosta he had instructed his staff members to make sure the two were not related.

11: The number of times he mentioned Hillary Clinton, his vanquished opponent in last year’s election. Mr. Trump is either having a hard time getting past the election or simply likes to talk about it since he won and it is a fond memory. The repeated references were to Mrs. Clinton receiving hints of debate questions ahead of time — a continuing sore subject — and her dealings with Russia while secretary of state, including a proposed reset “with a stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks.”

Read more >>>>

The press conference in which these references occurred was notable for its lack of focus and organization, belligerent, incoherent, rambling style, and its contradictions – a primary tool of gaslighting.

e.g. 1) As he ranted and raved:   “Tomorrow, they will say, ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press.’ I’m not ranting and raving.”

2) After declaring himself the least racist person, he confronted April Ryan (a 20-year White House press veteran who is African-American) who asked if he would meet with the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus – the initials of which he did not recognize) with “Do you want to arrange it? Are they friends of yours?”

The hour-and-a-quarter tirade was marked by a preoccupation with stats, polls, and vote counts, an obsession with perceived false reportage ( “The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake…The reporting is fake.”), and a marked inability to let go of his campaign or his adversary in that campaign whose name he invoked at odd intervals in the course of the event (in a few cases with bogus stories, i.e. “fake news”) and who was in New York minding her own business and honoring her late friend.

02-16-17-z-02

 

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I was looking for an image or video clip from CNN to use as a reminder about tonight’s Town Hall.  To my dismay, on this page, what I found was a video entitled “Hillary steals back momentum from Bernie Sanders.”  I cannot embed the video.  See it here >>>>

At least as disconcerting as the title is the ticker at the bottom of the video.

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The message was reinforced when David Chalian also used the verb to steal earlier today when discussing Hillary’s decisive victory in Nevada.

Indeed!  Hillary has neither stolen nor hijacked anything.  She has won, fair and square, the caucuses in Iowa and Nevada along with a boatload of endorsements and Super Delegate votes.

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It is irresponsible and biased on the part of the media to use such language.  This panders to those in both parties who wish to paint Hillary as dishonest and untrustworthy.

There are enough insults coming from candidates without the media chiming in with negative terms. Donald Trump has called Hillary evil.  Yesterday, this header from the New York Times:

Bernie Sanders Accuses Hillary Clinton of Copying His Message

Is there anybody who seriously thinks Hillary Clinton has ever entertained the impulse to copy anything?  Off of anybody?  From whom would she copy?  When you know your material, the concept of copying from the ill-prepared is not only unthinkable and counter-productive; it is a joke!

Meanwhile, we continue to search for a cohesive foreign policy from the Sanders camp.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks towards North Korea as US Secretary of Defense stands by as they visit the dimilitary zone that divides North and South Korea on July 21, 2010. AFP PHOTO/Paul J. Richards (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks towards North Korea as US Secretary of Defense stands by as they visit the dimilitary [sic] zone that divides North and South Korea on July 21, 2010. AFP PHOTO/Paul J. Richards (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Campaigns are messy.  As secretary of state, Hillary always reminded friends and partners new to the system that democracy is messy. But things needn’t be dirty.  To suggest that something untoward happened in fair races is unacceptable. It is bad enough that candidates hurl insults. When the media joins in with implications of wrongdoing, a line is crossed.

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