Analyzing Right-wing YouTube Channels: Hate, Violence and Discrimination
Summary:
Researchers analyze various right-wing Youtube channels to see if they contain more hateful vocabulary, violent content, and/or more discriminatory biases than regular channels. Users who comment on the videos are also analyzed to see if their comments are more likely to contain hate or discrimination. Channels were selected using InfoWars as a seed; meaning they used channels that were supported by InfoWars and its creator, Alex Jones. They studies did find that right-wing channels are more specific in their content, discussing topics like terrorism and war, and also use more words seen as negative than baseline youtube channels. Right-wing channels were also found to have a negative bias against muslim communities.
Reflection:
What struck out to me the most was that the study does not handle negations. This, to me, raises a lot of red flags about how the study was conducted; is it possible that many of the negative/hateful words and phrases they detected were accompanied by negations? The fact that the researchers did not consider negations should be concerning, as there is a massive difference between saying “This is bad” versus “This is not bad”.
There is also a question of what they used for their “baseline” sources, as they seem to at the very least, lean slightly left. VICE News is known to be fairly left leaning, as well as The Young Turks. It is questionable whether the “baseline” sources are neutral or not, but nevertheless, negative words are negative words.
While the study did not reveal anything new, it was interesting to see a quantification of what made right-wing news so obviously right-wing. With this information, we could better inform the public of what right-wing news looks like.
