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Cited by 171Social Media and PoliticsMisinformation and Its ImpactsPopulism, Right-Wing Movements

Examining the consumption of radical content on YouTube

Open access
Hosseinmardi, Homa, Ghasemian, Amir, Clauset, Aaron, Mobius, Markus, Rothschild, David M., Watts, Duncan J.·2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.2101967118PMC PMC8364190
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Abstract

Significance: Daily share of news consumption on YouTube, a social media platform with more than 2 billion monthly users, has increased in the last few years. Constructing a large dataset of users’ trajectories across the full political spectrum during 2016–2019, we identify several distinct communities of news consumers, including “far-right” and “anti-woke.” Far right is small and not increasing in size over the observation period, while anti-woke is growing, and both grow in consumption per user. We find little evidence that the YouTube recommendation algorithm is driving attention to this content. Our results indicate that trends in video-based political news consumption are determined by a complicated combination of user preferences, platform features, and the supply-and-demand dynamics of the broader web.

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  • Most movement to far-right videos comes from outside the platform.

    “Most movement to far-right videos comes from outside the platform”

    From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Hosseinmardi et al., 2021

    The Results (p. 7) report that 41% of referrals to far-right videos came from external URLs, not a majority. The larger figure of nearly 55% also includes the YouTube homepage and search queries, some of which were made inside YouTube; the Discussion (p. 8) describes these collectively as sources other than a previous YouTube video, not as sources outside the platform. (LLM, conf=0.88)

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  • Far-right videos are not more likely toward the end of sessions, where algorithmic recommendations matter most.

    “far-right videos are not more likely toward the end of sessions, where algorithmic recommendations matter most (Hosseinmardi et al., 2021).”

    From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Hosseinmardi et al., 2021

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1 of the 34 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 16

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Authors
Hosseinmardi, H., Ghasemian, A., Clauset, A., Mobius, M., Rothschild, D. M., & Watts, D. J.
Affiliations
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Santa Fe Institute (US)
  • Microsoft Research New England, Cambridge, MA 02142;
  • Microsoft Research New York City (United States) (US)
Corresponding author
  • Hosseinmardi, Homa
  • Watts, Duncan J.
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Published
2021-08-02
Volume
118
Issue
32
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2101967118
PMC
PMC8364190
OpenAlex
W3189072387
Cited by
171
References
34
Citations by year
2026: 24 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 5
FWCI
42.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/licenses.xhtml (vor, 184 d)
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Keywords
YouTube, radicalization, algorithmic recommendation, political news consumption, user engagement, gateway effect, political ideology, online media consumption
MeSH terms
Humans, Politics, Video Recording, Social Media

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