Analyzing Right-wing YouTube Channels: Hate, Violence, and Discrimination
Summary
The authors used a multi-layered analysis to compare (1) video captions vs. comments and (2) right-wing captions and comments vs. baseline captions and comments.
Reflection
Overall, I think this paper was awesome. There were little to no flaws in the data collection process, the authors explained how they achieved their final statistics in great detail, they had a pretty extensive reflection that interpreted what each part of the data meant, and the conclusion addressed specific downfalls and future research methods.
I was particularly blown away by the structure of the graphs in the lexicon analysis. The authors were able to display such a large amount of data in a small space while still maintaining its readability and meaning. I found the actual results of this study to be more understandable than usual, perhaps because the authors often used simplified graphs rather than extensive amounts of numbers. I will definitely be using the structure of this paper’s statistics as a reference for future projects.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this study, I would like to address a small issue that I noticed: there is no big-picture analysis. The authors do an extraordinary job at explaining what the data means, but they don’t interpret or guess why it is that way. For example, why might right-wing channels have a higher focus on terrorism? What are the over-arching trends?
In the conclusion, the authors wrote,
“These findings contribute to a better understanding of the behavior of general and right-wing YouTube users.”
To what end? Why does it matter? What changes do the authors want to see by the publishing of this study? Do they want YouTube to change the way its algorithm promotes content in some way? None of this is discussed.
Further Questions
- Why were most of the baseline comments focused around celebrities? Is it perhaps because approximately 40% of the comments used are from the channel DramaAlert?
- Why do right-wing comments generally exhibit more anger? Could we somehow find out who this anger is directed towards?
- What would very left-wing channels look like with these same features applied?
- What other methods could we use to select “baseline” channels? Could we hand-select them?
- What would these features look like applied to other types of content on YouTube? For example, the “Entertainment” category instead of “News.”
