Very interesting data, HUGE decline in right-wing media consumption and traffic.

[kpete]

March 27, 2024, New York, NY –In its second election year traffic report, TheRighting found that the vast majority of right wing news websites it monitored experienced significant audience erosion. Eighty-six percent experienced declines of 44% or more
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58ebd0e73a0411706a6b21e4/427f0555-78dc-4a54-aa02-c12871099cd4/Election+Yr+Feb+20+to+24+screenshot.png?format=1500w

https://www.therighting.com/election-year-audience-erosion-continues-for-right-wing-websites

Link to tweet

[Hugin]

1. They're all dead.

I can't think of any other thing which would tear them away from their beloved hate-o-vision.

Or, maybe, they were liars about their views in the past. Nah, that couldn't be it.

[Crowman2009]

12. The majority of right-wing viewers were always one foot in the grave anyway.

I can't wait for the day when all the old racists from the Jim Crow era finally become extinct.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. Sure, but they raised children. Children never born racists. Highest indicator for racism is having racist parents. nt

[Crowman2009]

23. That's unless said children grow up, leave the house, and never talk to their parents ever again.

[ShazzieB]

58. And some of us are raised by racist parents, but....

...have better sense than to adopt our paents' racism!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

60. And we're grateful for each and every one! . . . . nt

[ChazInAz]

71. That was the case with my sister and me.

We grew up in an immigrant neighborhood of Eastern Europeans in Springfield, Illinois. The Black neighborhood started on the next street over. Probably explains my life-long liberalism.

[Aristus]

82. My mother, for example.

She was raised in Alabama, and later Texas, by two ultra-conservative Southern Baptist racists.

My mother has always been a dyed-in-the-wool, Kennedy-style liberal, without a racist bone in her body, and she's very LGBTQ-friendly. She raised me, my brother, and my sister to be the same way.

[TheBlackAdder]

14. I was scrolling down to say they were sick of MAGA shit, but then realized your post was probably more accurate.

[Bev54]

29. Or in prison, maybe they don't allow them to listen to that garbage.

[BComplex]

78. Actually, every prison I know of blasts fux nooz 24/7. The prisoners are programmed to hate "liberals".

Liberals are also the party that tries to reform prisons, bring books and programs to prisons, and try to rehabilitate those who are not beyond rehabilitation.

[Bev54]

83. Can't say I dispute this, I have never been inside a prison for any reason. It just seems to me that

it would be in the best interest of a prison not to further indoctrinate inmates into hatred.

[BComplex]

84. I totally agree! It definitely WOULD be in the best interest of a prison NOT to further indoctrinate

inmates into hatred, but you have to consider the authoritarian nature of the vast majority of prison management and staff...they truly do employ mostly authoritarian types. And management and staff are the ones who get to choose the channels that are played, for the most part, and in most (not all) prisons.

[Wednesdays]

54. Indeed, COVID has wiped out hundreds of thousands of them

It's still a small percentage of voters, but in a close election it could become decisive.

[soldierant]

65. Some might be in prison

Certainly not enough to account for those numbers - but might still be a part of them.

[jmbar2]

2. K&R! Very interesting data indeed

I regularly cruise the Freepers to see what's going on in their small minds.

Postings seem to have dropped a lot, very few championing tRump, and they seem to have trouble raising the $81,000/quarter that they claim to need to keep that troglodyte website operating.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

31. Stats might be misleading. Reich wing audiences are volatile now; many say Fox is too liberal

They shift around a lot.

There would be a lot of RW media sites coming up fast on the outside, not included in that tabulation. Some didn't even exist four years ago; most notably Tucker Carlson's independent outlet. Epoch Times gets a lot of traffic now, I'm sure, judging by citations.

As to the FReak site, they seem just as active, but kind of subdued. They are deep into "dems gonna steal it" funks. But surprisingly there are quite a number of anti-tRump posts. Even posts highlighting tRump's criminality.

All the same, I fully expect there to be the same kind of site-wide prohibition against anti-tRump posts as in 2020, laid down by site owner RimJob when tRump is formally nominated as he is almost certainly going to be whether or not he has further convictions by that date.

[jmbar2]

34. Also have noticed more MSM articles than in the past

Plus some interesting posts about archeology, similar to what JudiLynn posts here.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

38. And a science poster or two. Plus enormous number of "my body did something; how're the kids" posts

There's a lot of chaff to zip over, but they have become a lot more amusing in the past three years than the four before that.

{ proposed trucker boycott of NYC }
Can you just imagine the scrambling going on right now. Betcha grocery
store shelves are empty, or very close to it.
4 posted on 2024-02-18 by ryderann

Former United States Representative Tulsi Gabbard addresses CPAC 2024 in Washington, D
2024-02-23, 136 of 136
mewzilla to Persevero
She’s Deep State.

Newsmax is just as corrupt as the rest of them.
150 posted on 2024-02-23, by silent_jonny (Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, Joe. The feet are at the door (Acts 5: 9) 9-18-21)

"The country is being divided into people who make things and people who don't."
And people who are compromised by child traffickers, and those who aren't.
55 posted on 2024-02-23, by kiryandil

[Owens]

76. Less Trump signs

I've seen fewer Trump signs here in Arizona - Phoenix area. Even my neighbors no longer have Trump signs.

[jmbar2]

80. Good to hear!

[tanyev]

3. Russian amplifiers diverted to catapult their own propaganda?

[Clash City Rocker]

77. My thought as well

[dweller]

4. They're going to need

A fresh pack of lies


✌🏻

[SalamanderSleeps]

5. encouraging....perhaps the dam is starting to break.

[drray23]

6. To me this suggests that the bulk of the traffic was bots

and whomever paid to have these bots amplify right wing disinformation and conspiracy theories pulled the plug.

[PatSeg]

19. Good point

[machoneman]

30. Yep, bet it was tons of bots.

[NJCher]

40. I thought you were right

and rec'd this post. Subsequent to that, however, the chart below was posted. There's an overall downward trend, even among what they call "mainstream sites" like Washington Post, NY Times, CNN, etc.

Remember how a few months ago the administrators told us that advertising $$ was down here at DU?

Maybe it's an overall trend, regardless of whether it's conservative or left leaning.

[drray23]

44. There might be a down trend

But numbers like 80 % less traffic seem too big to be just attributed to people who suddenly decided it's no longer interesting to them.
It's well documented that X( Twitter) had a large fraction of bot accounts for example. It's similar on any major media site.

[Probatim]

75. Especially if Biden and the shitbag are so close in polling.

Can't imagine you'd have a 90% drop in traffic if the viewers have changed their minds and not see that in the polling - it has to be bot traffic.

[kpete]

51. Yep

Bots

[Qutzupalotl]

7. The RW sites had been hyping impeachment and Hunter.

Didn't work out like they hoped. Now inflation is easing, the economy is rebounding, Trump sounds even crazier…

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Image...

[Johnny2X2X]

16. Truth Social?

Truth Social has 5 million users.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. I don't see that in the chart, which is from the OP.

[thesquanderer]

25. TS is not a news web site. Same reason you don't see twitter/x or facebook there either. n/t

[yardwork]

27. Interesting specifics, if accurate.

Newsmax viewership is up. Fox News only down a little. Most other right wing sites way down. But WaPo and NYT viewership is down, too.

[SergeStorms]

43. "Fox News only down a little"

Down 22% is "only a little"?

That's far more than a little.

I'm glad you're not my investment manager.

Newscrax has a far smaller audience than Fox, so their increase looks bigger percentage-wise, but in reality isn't that many people. People will probably tire of Newscrax after a while. They're nuttier than squirrel shit over there.

All-in-all, I'd say the right-wing propaganda Wurlitzer is pretty far out of tune, if you ask me (which you didn't) 😉

Have a Democratic day, yardwork.

[druidity33]

59. Fox News is tied for Fourth best...

on that list. They're tied with CNN. DKos at -4% and Newsmax at +38% beat them. So i guess the point is EVERYONE's numbers are down... Fox's is one of the least down.

[lindysalsagal]

9. They're reading their bibles. Too busy self-flagellating.

Maybe they went blind from all the incel pocket-hockey.

[SergeStorms]

46. I can picture them now.....

People walking around in MAGA hats, wearing their Trump sneakers, reading their Trump approved Trump bibles.......walking into trees, telephone poles, over steep cliffs, down long flights of stairs. Hey, maybe all that Trump merchandise isn't so bad after all.

[calimary]

69. Those wouldn't happen to be trump bibles, would they?

How do we know those bibles aren't just stacks of trump speeches, packaged as books?

[Sympthsical]

10. Feb/March 2020 is also when Covid started ramping up

So I'm not sure if saying "Let's compare election years" as if nothing else was going on is really useful in any way.

It doesn't feel apples to apples.

That said, even on the Right, I perceive people are just tired of hearing about Trump. They're over it.

They'll still vote - and we should behave as if they will - but in the spaces I read, I see a lack of enthusiasm or even willingness to really discuss very much about him. Most people already know where they're at in all this.

[JI7]

11. Maybe there are very few that get all the attention. Like Tucker Carlson

[et tu]

13. again, smelvis is

heading ever faster to the historical dustbin ~
unite and vote!

[Sky Jewels]

15. I'd also be interested to see the statistics on right wing hate radio.

I can't imagine that it is growing its audience. Younger people use Spotify and such. The radio-listening, Reagan-worshipping, right-wing-propaganda- susceptible types who belong to generations born before the 1960s are rapidly declining in numbers.

[Crowman2009]

24. Plus who the f*** under age 40 listens to AM radio?

I can't remember the last time I turned it to the AM band.

[SergeStorms]

47. There's a lawsuit right now....

to have U.S. auto-makers continue to include AM radio in all their new cars.

It seems the auto-makers wanted to discontinue the AM band on the radios of their new models, and right-wing nuts went crazy(er) about it. How else were they to listen to far-right talk radio without the AM band in their cars?

To my knowledge the case is still pending. Stay tuned (so to speak) to see how this pans out.

[flying_wahini]

81. If they want Hate radio then charge them an extra $5000.

[SergeStorms]

85. Works for me.

Make it $25,000.

[GenThePerservering]

64. Sports is on AM radio (NT)

[TBF]

18. a bunch of them are in jail for participating in the insurrection - so there's that. nt

[IronLionZion]

21. The time period is Feb 2020 to Feb 2024

so many of them died from COVID to own the libs, were Russian bots, or some may have wised up to the reality that right wing media is feeding them lies.

[Kid Berwyn]

22. There is a cure for Trump Cult Derangement.

Truth.

[Think. Again.]

32. Only if they take it.

[SergeStorms]

48. AM talk radio....

is like the Ivermectin of "truth".

[LastDemocratInSC]

53. Very creative and very true.

[thesquanderer]

26. I think head is misleading. NYT is down just as much as Fox. Wash Post is down far more than either of them.

It's not just a rightwing thing. Maybe people just aren't reading news sites as much.

[Think. Again.]

33. NYT is very much rightwing....

....and uber-capitalst Bezos owns Washington Post.

[yardwork]

35. WaPo is a moderate publication with plenty of liberal points of view.

I think people are just getting fatigued with news.

[Think. Again.]

36. The "center" has been allowed to be dragged so far to the right...

....that "Moderate" is the new shockingly anti-liberal.

[thesquanderer]

42. Seriously? You're going to put NYT and WP in the same category as Newsmax et al?

(Newsmax being the only source listed that has actually grown online readership.)

I'm not saying NYT is a beacon of the left, but they are certainly not RW a la brietbart.

[Think. Again.]

45. Yeah, I wasn't comparing how far right they are to each other.....

...just using a basic left, right, or factual scale.

So yes, "right" is the category I put them in.

[OnlinePoker]

37. I'd like to see a similar data load for left wing sites

I think people have stopped trusting a large portion of the media space right now because of misinformation fatigue. It wouldn't even matter if left wing sites are fully factual in their reporting. The perception now is there's nobody you can trust.

[thesquanderer]

41. Look at the chart, the data is there for non-RW sites as well (left and moderate)

That's why I said the headline doesn't match the data, because non RW-readership is down too (consistent with your point as well).

[bdamomma]

79. That "perception of no one you can trust"

is what those in the GQP and other adversarial countries or leaders want us to do to get the citizenry confused and not to trust anything we read or listen too. Out of the playbook.

[FakeNoose]

57. Both NYT and WaPo are dogging their paywalls

I used to read them both regularly without buying a subscription.

Nowadays I can only read the NYT and WaPo articles that someone posts on DU.

[thesquanderer]

62. but I don't think the paywalls there any more of a factor than they were a year ago. (n/t)

[SWBTATTReg]

28. Lots of competition out there for the viewing public. Plus, this right-wing hate stuff is getting boring and

repetitive. Like tRUMP. Boring and repetitive, old and out of date.

[John Farmer]

39. I used to go to (and post regularly)

on a couple of right-wing forums. After a combined 18,000 posts one forum folded and the other banned me.

[Torchlight]

49. I'm hoping that it boils down to Rage-For-Profit has finally hit its peak.

A major reason we've just never gotten into cable news (besides the weird personality cults that have developed) is that we're both kids of watching rational, even-keeled, boring even, news for 30 minutes after dinner growing up. Grown-up news. News as adults do it. Cable news thee days comes across as channel after channel of tantrums, displays of emotion, hosts sanctimoniously and consistently moralizing about someone else's kids, etc. Drama. Soap operas. Yelling. Name-calling. Same form and function as the Banana Splits show I used to watch growing up as kid.,

Near the end of life, Cronkite said his most embarrassing professional moment was losing it when Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. Though he also said he had every right as a human to express himself as such, he reiterated that he had a larger obligation as a journalist to maintain as much objectivity as he possibly could, and he said he failed to do that. I'd be preyty happy if the Personality Cults of Cable News get replaced with something boring. Adult even.

[liberalla]

50. K&R

This sounds like good news. I want to go over the data more thoroughly when I'm not on the bus!

Thanks!

[enid602]

52. Evangelicals

The Evangelical world is inundated with fear that Trump is the anti-Christ.

[Joinfortmill]

73. They may be right.

[Jarqui]

55. I think a bunch migrated to social media ...

I can't back that up.
It's feeling I get when I'm on social media.

[IbogaProject]

56. More on social media

YouTube, FaceBook and such. So we shouldn't get distracted, we all have to try and swing a few votes over. We have to keep in simple Joe had decades of experience, he passed two of the biggest spending on growth bills ever. Bigger than the New Deal, Eisenhower and the Great Society together and adjusted for inflation. It would have been bigger and better if not for the campaign finance issues that gave us Manchin and Senemia. Tax cuts for the rich and wealthy haven't worked. It's time to cut the taxes for the majority of Americans and make the wealthy pay up. This isn't to 'redistribute' but to boost economic activity over a certain income spending slows and gets inefficient.

[Captain Zero]

70. I've noticed in a few local and state reddits that...

...there is an increasing number of contributors complaining about the politicization of those threads. Like, "why is this reddit always talking about politics". Everybody knows that reddit has always been very liberal and maybe these are uneasy lurkers? But the recent uptick in people who "just want to know about restaurants and festivals and other fun and interesting things to do" seems somehow to be organized.

Has anyone else noticed this in their state/local reddits??

It's obvious that they are right of center and want to shut down political thought, although they seldom really espouse or advocate outright for conservative viewpoints.

[Mountainguy]

61. It probavly just means

They have decided those are too liberal and fou d something crazier to watch. Notice that Newsmax is up.

[DallasNE]

63. The Message Stagnated

Witch hunt, never proven, got boring. The high tops may have been the last straw - along with the strong State of the Union address by President Biden.

[Harmony Starshine]

66. Another ray of hope

that truth win

[HandmaidsTaleUntold]

67. Lies Get Old And Tired

RW outrage media is very unpleasant and hurts the soul. Their hatred needs to be turned back on them.

[GoodRaisin]

68. Good, maybe the morons finally realized they have been consuming bullshit. Kick

[Joinfortmill]

72. Good. Wishing for the demise of FoxNews. May they rot in hell.