These disagreements may arise from methodological differences that make the results hard to compare-for example, Ref. ( 2020) and others finding the opposite Munger and Phillips ( 2020) Ledwich and Zaitsev ( 2019).

( 2020) that have examined this question have reached conflicting conclusions, with some finding evidence of radicalization Ribeiro et al. ( 2020) Munger and Phillips ( 2020) Ledwich and Zaitsev ( 2019) Faddoul et al. On a platform with almost 2 billion users Maryam Mohsin ( 2020), it is possible to find examples of almost any type of behavior, hence anecdotes do not on their own indicate systematic problems. However, systematic evidence for these claims are elusive. For example, it has been reported that starting from factual videos about the flu vaccine, the recommender system can drive users toward anti-vaccination conspiracy videos Kevin Roose ( 2019) Zeynep Tufekci ( 2017). The large followings of some of these channels have prompted the hypothesis that YouTube itself is driving traffic to them via its recommendation engine, and is therefore effectively radicalizing its users Kevin Roose ( 2019) Zeynep Tufekci ( 2017) James Bridle ( 2017) Tom Whyman ( 2017a, b). Moreover, recent work Clark and Zaitsev ( 2020) has identified a large number of YouTube channels, mostly operated by individual people or small organizations, that produce large amounts of extreme right-wing and–less frequently–left-wing content. ( 2020) Statista ( 2019b), and is growing both in size and engagement. ( 2020) Statista ( 2019a), a number that is comparable with the corresponding Twitter audience Konitzer et al. ( 2018) Pennycook and Rand ( 2019) Roozenbeek and Vanĭer Linden ( 2019), roughly 23 million Americans rely on YouTube as source of news Konitzer et al. As political polarization rises and trust in traditional sources of authority declines, concerns have naturally arisen regarding the presence and impact of hyper-partisan or conspiratorial content on social media platforms that, while not clearly in violation of platform rules, may nonetheless have corrosive or radicalizing effects on users.Īlthough research on online misinformation has to date focused mostly on Facebook and Twitter Conover et al. And the sheer scale of online platforms-Facebook and YouTube each have more than 2 billion active users per month–tends to amplify the effect of any flaws in their algorithmic design or content moderation policies. On the consumption side, search and recommendation engines make even marginal actors easily discoverable, allowing them to build large, highly engaged audiences at a low cost. On the production side, it has dramatically reduced the barriers to entry for would-be publishers of news, leading to a proliferation of small and often unreliable sources of information. The internet has fundamentally altered the production and consumption of political news content. Our results emphasize the importance of measuring consumption directly rather than inferring it from recommendations. Rather, consumption of radical content on YouTube appears to reflect broader patterns of news consumption across the web. Finally, while the size, intensity, and growth of this echo chamber present real concerns, we find no evidence that they are caused by YouTube recommendations. Moreover, YouTube accounts for an increasing fraction of these users’ overall online news consumption. Users in this community show higher engagement and greater “stickiness” than users who consume any other category of content.

However, we also find evidence for a small but growing “echo chamber” of far-right content consumption. Consistent with previous work, we find that political news content accounts for a relatively small fraction ( 11 %) of consumption on YouTube, and is dominated by mainstream and largely centrist sources.

Here we investigate these concerns with large scale longitudinal data of individuals’ browsing behavior spanning January 2016 through December 2019. Recently, YouTube’s outsize influence has sparked concerns that its recommendation algorithm systematically directs users to radical right-wing content. Although it is understudied relative to other social media platforms, YouTube is arguably the largest and most engaging online media consumption platform in the world.

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