Science has discovered the reason for modern political polarization, and it’s not Soros. Trump supporters simply do not live in consensus reality, a University of Oxford study has found.

The study, from the university’s Computational Propaganda Research Project (COMPROP), focused on the proliferation of trashy news sources in the three months leading up to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, and concluded that the majority (55%) of news shared and consumed by Trump supporters falls into its “junk news” category. Junk news was defined as coming from sites associated with low-quality, extremist, sensationalist or conspiratorial content — in other words, the very fake news Trump supporters loudly claim to hate.

Around 13,500 politically active US Twitter users as well as 48,000 Facebook pages were monitored and put into categories such as “Conservative Media,” “Women’s Rights,” “Resistance,” “Hard Conservative,” “Trump Supporters,” “Republican Party” (distinct from Trump supporters) and “Military/Guns.” The categorization was based both on post content and self-identification such as #MAGA in profile fields.

There was an extreme difference between the groups in frequency of links to the 91 sites the “team of 12 trained coders familiar with the US political and media landscape” had marked as junk: “The Trump Support group consumes the highest volume of junk news sources on Twitter, and spreads more junk news sources, than all the other groups put together. This pattern is repeated on Facebook, where the Hard Conservatives group consumed the highest proportion of junk news.”

Put simply, people marked with right-wing classifications (but particularly Trump supporters) strongly prefer bogus screeds from conspiracy theory sites like InfoWars and Breitbart, while left-wingers stick to authentic news from outlets like BBC, CNN, Young Turks, and MSNBC.

Surprisingly, the study did not find a lot of russian sites being shared, but the researchers added that “the political conversations on social media exclude a Russian audience group.”

The study did not address whether any of the monitored Twitter and Facebook accounts were bots.

Here’s the study’s list of junk news sites:

100percentfedup.com

allenbwest.com

americanthinker.com

anonews.co

barenakedislam.com

beforeitsnews.com

bipartisanreport.com

bizpacreview.com

bredred.com

breitbart.com

campusreform.org

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

clintonemail.com

cnsnews.com

commonsenseconservative.org

concealncarry.stfi.re

conservativedailypost.com

conservativeoutfitters.com

conservativeread.com

conservativereview.com

conservativetribune.com

constitution.com

crooksandliars.com

dailycaller.com

dailynewsbin.com

dangerandplay.com

dcclothesline.com

deepstatenation.com

dennismichaellynch.com

donaldtrumpnews.co drudgereport.com

endingthefed.com

eutimes.net

floppingaces.net

freebeacon.com

frontpagemag.com

gotnews.com

hannity.com

hotair.com

hotpagenews.com

infowars.com

inquisitr.com

joeforamerica.com

judicialwatch.org

lawnews.tv

lifenews.com

magafeed.com

mediaite.com

mobile.wnd.com

mostdamagingwikileaks.com

mrctv.org

nationalreview.com

naturalnews.com

newsbusters.org

newsmax.com

nydailynews.com

occupydemocrats.com

pamelageller.com

pastebin.com

patdollard.com patriotpost.us

politopinion.com

puppetstringnews.com

rasmussenreports.com

redstate.com

redstatewatcher.com

scooprocket.com

shareblue.com

silenceisconsent.net

stateofthenation2012.com

theamericanfirst.com

theamericanmirror.com

theblacksphere.net

theconservativetreehouse.com

thefederalist.com

thefederalistpapers.org

thegatewaypundit.com

theodysseyonline.com

thepoliticalinsider.com

therealstrategy.com

therebel.media

truepundit.com

truthfeed.com

ukok.page.tl

usalibertynews.com

vaskal.ca

weaselzippers.us

westernjournalism.com

wnd.com

youngcons.com

yournewswire.com

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I write about the alt-right and other shenanigans. Proud owner of two rescue cats and a 1970 Triumph Bonneville. Send me stuff at [email protected] if you dare.