PoliticusUSA explained

PoliticusUSA
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Language:English
Founded:2009
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Country Of Origin:United States
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PoliticusUSA is an American left-wing[1] website that publishes hyperpartisan clickbait. Its content has been described by academic studies and journalistic reports as "unreliable," "misleading," and "fake".[2] It is among the most popular U.S. political websites.

PoliticusUSA was established in 2009.

History

A digital native media outlet, according to PoliticusUSA it was established in 2009.[3]

Content

PoliticusUSA's editorial mission is to convey "news, political commentary & analysis from a liberal point of view" [''sic''].[4] While the site aligns itself with a clear political agenda, it rejects the notion that it is politically biased.[5]

Various academic studies and journalistic reports have identified PoliticusUSA as a left-leaning[1] publisher of hyperpartisan content;[6] "misleading," "unreliable" or "fake" news;[2] and clickbait.[7] Writing for Vice, Mike Pearl has described PoliticusUSA as "so one-sided that it's hard to be fully informed if that's all you read",[8] while Slates Ben Mathis-Lilley has characterized PoliticusUSA as a "low-budget" site "loaded with browser-murdering junk ads".[9] Dante Ramos, a Boston Globe columnist, described a 2016 PoliticusUSA column titled "“Obama Just Annihilated Donald Trump with the Whole World Watching" as "clickbait" and noted it was among a type of story that "never live up to their billing".[10]

PoliticusUSA has published health and medical misinformation. For instance, a 2015 article on the site claimed that the National Institutes of Health discovered marijuana "kills cancer", an assertion rated as False by Snopes,[11] [12] while a 2020 article claimed that the entire population of Oklahoma who took a COVID-19 test, tested positive for the virus, which PolitiFact graded False.[13]

Other stories on PoliticusUSA have also been discredited by fact checkers and mainstream media. For example, in 2018, according to Bloomberg, the site "misleadingly reported ... [Donald] Trump asked for the constitution to be changed so he can be president for 16 years" The previous year, PoliticusUSA reported that "Senior White House officials" stated the 2017 Shayrat missile strike was "intended to make Trump look strong", a claim Snopes classified as False.[14] Also in 2017, PoliticusUSA published a story that claimed "the Russians" had created a fake Bernie Sanders Facebook fan page, a story The Observer described as "fake news".[15] [16]

In 2018, PoliticusUSA re-reported a story from The Guardian that alleged Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange in the embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom, a meeting both Manafort and Assange denied taking place. The claims in the story were criticized by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting for, according to researcher Benjamin Horne, "relying on anonymous sources, not providing any verifiable details, and being, in general, unbelievable given the high level of surveillance in the area surrounding the embassy".[17] [18] In a later investigation of the story, Slate described it as "journalistic malpractice" and riddled with "serious problems"; The Intercept concluded there was no reason to believe the story was true.[19] [20]

Influence and reach

During the time period May 1, 2015 to November 7, 2016, posts on PoliticusUSA that were shared to Twitter and Facebook were among the most-accessed U.S. political content.[21] A 2017 study by Harvard researchers found that PoliticusUSA articles received "substantially more attention on social media than they receive inlinks from open web media".[22] In the summer of 2018, PoliticusUSA traffic coming through Facebook had fallen roughly 80 percent, year over year, after Facebook began demoting from newsfeeds sites "repeatedly dinged by fact-checkers".[23]

As part of a 2020 study, researchers from the Polytechnic University of Milan found that the virality on Twitter of posts by PoliticusUSA and Breitbart outweighed all other sources examined in their research for reach and impact.[24]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Sources describing PoliticusUSA's content as "left", "left-wing", "leftist", or "left-leaning" include:
  2. Sources describing PoliticusUSA's content as "fake news", "unreliable" or "misleading" include:
  3. Web site: About Us . PoliticusUSA. 4 July 2010 . https://archive.today/20240101195207/https://www.politicususa.com/about-us-politicususa. January 1, 2024 . April 10, 2023.
  4. News: Greico . Elizabeth . Few sites linked to in immigration-related tweets explicitly stated a political ideology or 'anti-establishment' focus . April 10, 2023 . . January 29, 2018.
  5. Robertson . Craig T. . Mourão . Rachel R. . 2020-09-13 . Faking Alternative Journalism? An Analysis of Self-Presentations of "Fake News" Sites . . en . 8 . 8 . 13 . 10.1080/21670811.2020.1743193 . 2167-0811.
  6. Sources describing PoliticusUSA's content as either "hyperpartisan" or "highly polarized" include:
  7. Sources describing PoliticusUSA's content as "clickbait" or classifying PoliticusUSA as a "clickbait" site include:
  8. News: Pearl . Mike . No, Kid Rock Isn't on the Verge of Becoming a Senator . April 10, 2023 . . August 26, 2017.
  9. News: Matthis-Lilley . Ben . Let's All Stop Mindlessly Clicking and Sharing Zombie Links . January 1, 2024 . Slate . October 30, 2019.
  10. News: Ramos . Dante . Memo to partisans: Sharing wishful-thinking clickbait doesn't help . January 3, 2024 . . August 1, 2016.
  11. News: Kasprak . Alex . Did the National Cancer Institute 'Finally Admit' That Marijuana Kills Cancer? . April 10, 2023 . . June 4, 2018.
  12. Zeng . Huai-Kuan . Wu . Tai-Yee . Atkin . David J. . 2023-01-02 . Check the Report and Comments: The Veracity Assessment of Unfamiliar News on Social Media . . en . 11 . 1 . 161–180 . 10.1080/21670811.2022.2079541 . 2167-0811.
  13. News: Kertscher . Tom . "Oklahoma 100% coronavirus test rate after Trump Tulsa rally." . April 10, 2023 . . June 29, 2020.
  14. News: Emery . David . White House Admits Syria Missile Attack Was a Publicity Stunt to Make Trump Look Good? . January 1, 2024 . . April 8, 2017.
  15. News: Sainato . Michael . Rachel Maddow Asserts Russian Government Incited 'Bot Attack' on Sanders Groups . January 3, 2024 . . March 22, 2017.
  16. News: Easley . Jason . Liberals Fight for America . January 3, 2024 . . March 21, 2017. January 4, 2024. https://archive.today/20240104064023/https://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/21/liberals-fight-america-rachel-maddow-exposes-fake-russian-bernie-sanders-page.html.
  17. Adalı . Sibel . Different Spirals of Sameness: A Study of Content Sharing in Mainstream and Alternative Media . Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media . 2019 . 13 . 265 . 10.1609/icwsm.v13i01.3227 . 1904.01534 .
  18. PhD . Horne. Benjamin . 2020. Robust News Veracity Detection . Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute University.
  19. News: MacLeod . Alan . The Manafort-Assange meeting that wasn't: A case study in journalistic malpractice . April 10, 2023 . Slate . December 7, 2018.
  20. News: Greenwald . Glen . Glenn Greenwald . November 27, 2018 . It Is Possible Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange. If True, There Should Be Ample Video and Other Evidence Showing This. . April 11, 2023 . The Intercept.
  21. Book: Benkler . Yochai . Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics . 2018 . . . 978-0190923631 . 269–288 . 10.1093/oso/9780190923624.003.0009 .
  22. Book: Partisanship, Propaganda and Disinformation . August 2017 . Berkman Klein Center . 15 . April 10, 2023.
  23. News: Elgin . Ben . Facebook's Battle Against Fake News Notches an Uneven Scorecard . April 15, 2023 . . April 24, 2018.
  24. Ceri . Stefano . A multi-layer approach to disinformation detection in US and Italian news spreading on Twitter . EPJ Data Science . 23 November 2020 . 9 . 35 . 10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-00253-8 . April 10, 2023. 11311/1154006 . free .

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