Occupy Democrats

Occupy Democrats is a left-wing Facebook page[2] describing itself as a political organization[3] based in the United States, founded in 2012 by twin brothers Omar Rivero and Rafael Rivero. The motto of the organization is to provide a "counterbalance to the Republican Tea Party".[4] On social media, Occupy Democrats was named the "Most Influential Progressive Facebook Page" by CrowdTangle in 2015 and by 2017 surpassed 7 million followers.[5]

Occupy Democrats
OwnerOmar Rivero and Rafael Rivero
URLoccupydemocrats.com
Alexa rank 113,284 (June 2020)[1]
Launched2012
Current statusOnline

In a 2017 feature on partisan news, BuzzFeed News analyzed weekly Facebook engagements "since the beginning of 2015 and found that Occupy Democrats on the left and Fox News on the right are the top pages in each political category." The article added that the pages "consistently generate more total engagement than the pages of major media outlets."[6] The organization received wide attention during the 2016 presidential primaries of the Democratic Party, and was credited for having helped build support for Bernie Sanders' candidacy.[7]

In a 2017 survey among US readers, it was voted the "least trusted news source" among American readers, just below Breitbart and BuzzFeed.[3] In their news reporting, they shared a story on Facebook and other social media platforms about Senator Mitch McConnell's polio treatment that was unverified.[8] In the same year, PolitiFact included Occupy Democrats in its list of fake news. In 2017 however, Politifact removed Occupy Democrats from its list of fake news sites and, according to the Miami New Times, "admitted Occupy Democrats should never have been on the list in the first place."[9] In 2018, the English Wikipedia deprecated Occupy Democrats as a source of fact, "due to its unreliability".[10][11]

CNN mentioned Occupy Democrats in an online article about identifying misleading news, citing it as an example of a website using unverified photographs and videos. The example purported to show a female being ejected by police from a restroom for "not looking like a woman" due to a controversial law passed by North Carolina in March 2016, but Snopes found that the footage dated from at least 2015 and provided no context as to where the woman is and why she was ejected.[12][13]

References
  1. "occupydemocrats.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic". Alexa Internet. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  2. Kevin Roose (August 6, 2017). "Political Donors Put Their Money Where the Memes Are". New York Times.
  3. Ruddick, Graham (August 9, 2017). "Four UK news sources among top 10 most trusted in US – survey". The Guardian. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  4. "Occupy Democrats's file". Politifact. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  5. Shammas, Brittany (September 26, 2017). "Behind the Scenes at Occupy Democrats, the Left Wing's Answer to Fake News". L.A. Weekly. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  6. "Inside The Partisan Political Fight For Your Facebook News Feed". BuzzFeed News. August 8, 2017. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
  7. "Yes, I'd lie to you". The Economist. September 10, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  8. Phillips, Kristine (June 27, 2017). "No, the government did not pay for Mitch McConnell's polio care. Charity did". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  9. Shammas, Brittany (October 2, 2017). "How PolitiFact Got Its "Fake News" Tag Wrong on Occupy Democrats". Miami New Times. Retrieved April 17, 2018.
  10. Cole, Samantha (October 2, 2018). "Wikipedia Bans Right Wing Site Breitbart as a Source for Facts". Motherboard. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
  11. Fuller, Melynda. "Breitbart, InfoWars Banned as Wikipedia Sources". Mediapost. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
  12. LaCapria, Kim (April 28, 2016). "Lesbian Kicked out of North Carolina Bathroom?". Snopes. Retrieved June 27, 2018.
  13. Willingham, AJ (November 18, 2016). "Here's how to outsmart fake news in your Facebook feed". CNN. Retrieved June 27, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.