Title: Analyzing Right-wing YouTube Channels: Hate, Violence, and Discrimination

Summary:

The purpose of the study was to determine ifhateful vocabulary, violent content and discriminatory biases more, less, or equally prevalent in right-wing channels and whether or not video commenters more, less or equally aggravated than video hosts. The research was conducted over a set of data collected on right wing video channels and baseline videos. They investigated the presence of hateful speech by using three-layer approach (lexicon, topics, and implicit bias) over users’ comments and video content. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions about Right-wing channels:

•  Right-wing channels tend to contain a higher degree of words from “negative” semantic fields
•  raise more topics related to war and terrorism
•  demonstrate more discriminatory bias against Muslims (in videos) and towards LGBT people

Reflection

YouTube has changed the way we acquire and spread information in our society. Everyone has now easy access to start a podcast or channel to spread information. This also brings a lot of challenges and one of them is the spread of heat speech specially from Right-wing channels. The 2016 election is good example for this. I believe that this study provided a step forward in tackling this problem. Even though, I am really impressed by their findings and conclusion, I am not surprised. Nevertheless, their research gives a great insight for future studies. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications.

Part 1: From their findings that impressed me the most is that Right-wing channels tended to contain more “negative” semantics fields. It is important to know what the motive behind it is. 

 Questions and further research 

1. Can we determine the standard a video based on users’ activity or account information? This will help us to perfectly identify hate-based videos. 
2. What would be the result if we do the same research on other social media platforms like twitter and Facebook. I believe that conducting a research across different platforms would give insights about the commonality of this type of videos. 

Part 2: that stack out of me after reading the study is that do Right wing channels differ in terms of their approach? Do they change their approach time to time or stay consistent? I believe that doing more research on multiple Right winged channels on YouTube will help us to solve this problem. 

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Title: Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos

Summary:

The purpose of the study was to determine the difference in user response (views, replies, and likes) between informative and conspiracy-based YouTube videos.  The research was conducted over a set of data collected on the most popular videos on YouTube during the zika-virus outbreak in 2016.  Their result showed that 12 out of the 35 videos in the data set focused on conspiracy theories, but no statistical differences were found. The result of research can be used to improve future online health promotion campaigns and combat the spread of false information.  Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:

• Results on user activity showed no statistically significant differences across the video types
• YouTube users respond in similar ways, in terms of views, shares and likes, to videos containing informational and conspiracy theory content. 
• Understanding the various types of contestation present in YouTube video user responses on the Zika-virus is important for future online health promotion campaigns 

Reflection

YouTube has changed the way we acquire and spread information in our society. Everyone has now easy access to start a podcast or channel to spread information. This also brings a lot of challenges and one of them is the spread of Conspiracy theories. We don’t have to look no more than the Ebola outbreak in 2016 to see the threat it posed in our society (see the New York’s time article titled “Ebola Conspiracy Theories” for more information). I believe that this study provided a step forward in tackling this problem. Even though, I am really impressed by their findings and conclusion, the study lacked concreate arguments and a broader data set to back up their findings. Moreover, a lot of assumptions were taken which affects the creditability of their study. Nevertheless, their research gives a great insight for future studies. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications. 

Part 1: From their findings that amazes me the most is that results on user activity showed no statistically significant differences across the video types. 

 Questions and further research 

1. One question we can ask is there any difference in terms of video types. I believe that conducting a research on users across different videos give insights about why conspiracy videos spread easily.  
2. Can we determine the standard a video based on users’ activity or account information? This will help us to perfectly identify. 

Part 2: that stack out of me after reading the study is that do conspiracy videos differ in terms of their approach? Do they change their approach time to time or stay consistent? I believe that doing more research on multiple Conspiracy videos on YouTube will help us to solve this problem. 

Title: Automated Hate Speech Detection and the Problem of Offensive Language

Summery: 

The purpose of the study was to improve the detection method for hate speech from other instances of offensive language. They used a crowd-sourced hate speech lexicon to collect tweets containing hate speech keywords and trained a multi-class classifier to distinguish between these different categories. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:

• racist and homophobic tweets are more likely to be classified as hate speech but that sexist tweets are generally classified as offensive 
• Tweets with the highest predicted probabilities of being hate speech tend to contain multiple racial or homophobic slurs 
• Tweets without explicit hate keywords are also more difficult to classify 

Reflection: 

With Twitter and Facebook becoming the most powerful medium to reach the public, it is essential that we combat the spread of heat speech through those platforms. The research did a great job in terms reliably separating hate speech from other offensive language. But I believe still more work has to be done to improve the classifier. I am not convinced that the human classification is the perfect way to classify tweets. Maybe using smart algorithms can improve the results. 

 Questions and further research 

• Does a difference in culture affect or influence hate speech? Conducting research on different group of people will provide some meaningful findings  
• What kind of content does hateful users consume? We can easily identify the root cause of hate speech by studding users who consume or spread heat speech. 
• Is there any significant difference in word usage between hate and offensive speech? We might be able to determine what type of a speech is based on usage stop-words and nouns, proper nouns and verb phrases. 

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This Just In: Fake News Packs a Lot in Title, Uses Simpler, Repetitive Content in Text Body, More Similar to Satire than Real News 

Summary:

The purpose of the study was to debunk the assumption that fake news is written to look more like a real news and to show that it is more related to a satire news. Their work can help to develop technologies that can detect malicious fake news. The study was conducted through a unique study of three data sets and features that capture the style and the language of articles. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:

• Fake news is more similar to satire news than real news 
• Persuasion in fake news is achieved through heuristics rather than the strength of arguments 
• Fake news is targeted for audiences who are not likely to read beyond titles 

Reflection:

Social Media specially twitter has changed the way we acquire information in our society. This also brings a lot of challenges and one of them is the spread of fake news. We don’t have to look no more than the 2016 election to see the threat it posed in our society. I believe that this study provided a step forward in tackling this problem. Even though, I am really impressed by their findings and conclusion, the study lacked concreate arguments and a broader data set to back up their findings. Moreover, a lot of assumptions were taken which affects the creditability of their study. Nevertheless, their research gives a great insight for future studies. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications on how we perceive fake news. 

Part 1: From their findings that amazes me the most is that fake news is more like a satire news than real news. This makes me to question the intention and the motive of Fake news article writers. Are some fake news articles purpose is to demonize a specific person than spreading a fake news? Conducting a more intensive research on their social media account and organization affiliation might provide great awareness.

Part 2: According to their studies, “Fake news titles use significantly fewer stop-words and nouns, while using significantly more proper nouns and verb phrases.” I think this is an eye-opening discovery that can open doors for further studies.  

Questions and further research 

1. One question we can ask is are fake news consumers interested only on the title than the content of the article? I believe that conducting a research on fake news consumers might give insights about why fake news articles poses the above format and why it is effective. 
2. Can we determine the standard and political affiliation of a news source based on the title of its published articles? This will help us to better distinguish a fake news from a real news.  

Part 3: The other question that I discovered after reading the paper is that do fake news articles differ in terms of their approach? Do they change their approach time to time or stay consistent? I believe that doing more research on multiple fake news sources will help us to combat fake news. 

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Summery: 

The purpose of the study was to broaden our understanding of journalists’ use of twitter and to complement prior studies. Their work can be used to “inform the design of more customized tools for this group of professionals.” The study conducted on 5, 000 twitter accounts in order to extract eighteen summarizing features. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:

• the accounts of news outlets use an official style and share more links than journalists
• Arab journalists broadcast more tweets and are more distinguishable 
• television journalists share similarities with radio and print journalists
• Print and radio journalists are the most dissimilar groups 

Reflection: 

With twitter becoming the most powerful medium to reach the public, it essential to study the usage paten of journalists, news organizations, and news consumers and contrast their strategy. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications on the journalist’s’ use of Twitter. 

Reflection I (Organizations Broadcast, Journalists Target)

According the study, “For each tweet published by a journalist, an organization publishes three, on average.” Moreover, an organization shares a link in every other tweet (perhaps from its own website). But a journalist shares only one link in six tweets. This probably great indication of how organizations and journalists differ in terms of twitter usage.  I believe that while journalists use twitter to express their idea and connect with people, Organizations uses it for promotion and to attract audiences. These findings also raise another question which is: Are journalists concerned more about the creditability of their sources to share it with news consumers, thus limiting their influence toward news consumers. It is clear that more work must be done to exactly determine the impact of the above findings.

Further Interesting work regarding this:

• The effectiveness of sharing a link in a tweet in terms of promoting your organization. By collecting data how many times the link accessed by news consumers, we can find out if sharing a link, a good way of promoting organization. 
• Are there any similarities or differences between the journalist’s audience and the audience of the organization which the journalist affiliated with? This might indicate if the organization the journalist works for influences his/her twitter usage. 
• I am also very interested in finding out how effective is to use twitter as a source of information. If it does, it might also affect the culture of journalism either in a positive or negative way. 

Reflection II (Arab Journalists Are More Distinguishable)

According to the study, “Arab journalists are less likely to have this communication pattern, though. They also are more distinguishable from news consumers than English journalists are.” These might raise a big question on the relationship between Arab journalists and their news consumers. Is there any disconnection or mistress between the news consumer and the Arab journalists? We can further our understanding by conducting more research based on the findings provided by this study. 

Further Interesting work regarding this:

• Does a difference in culture affect or influence twitter usage? Conducting research on journalists from different part of the world might provide some meaningful findings  
• Does the journalist communication patter with the news consumers indicates creditability of the journalist or the news organization he/she represents? Does having less communication pattern indicates the journalist is not trusted or affiliated with organizations not supported by most of the news consumers?
• Is there any significant difference in word usage between Arab and English journalists? How they conduct themselves on twitter might indicate the cultural shift in twitter usage by the journalists. 

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