Related papers: Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube
Online video-sharing sites such as YouTube are very popular and also used by a lot of people to obtain knowledge and information, also on science, health and technology. Technically they could be valuable tools for the public communication…
We address the problem of predicting the leading political ideology, i.e., left-center-right bias, for YouTube channels of news media. Previous work on the problem has focused exclusively on text and on analysis of the language used, topics…
YouTube has become the second most popular website according to Alexa, and it represents an enticing platform for scammers to attract victims. Because of the computational difficulty of classifying multimedia, identifying scams on YouTube…
The confluence of technological and societal advances is changing the nature of global terrorism. For example, engagement with Web, social media, and smart devices has the potential to affect the mental behavior of the individuals and…
YouTube is the second most visited website in the world and receives comments from millions of commenters daily. The comments section acts as a space for discussions among commenters, but it could also be a breeding ground for problematic…
In this work, we provide an in-depth analysis of collusive entities on YouTube fostered by various blackmarket services. Following this, we propose models to detect three types of collusive YouTube entities - videos seeking collusive likes,…
YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly…
The Internet and, in particular, Online Social Networks have changed the way that terrorist and extremist groups can influence and radicalise individuals. Recent reports show that the mode of operation of these groups starts by exposing a…
The spread of inaccurate and misleading information may alter behaviours and complicate crisis management, especially during an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to investigate information diffusion during the COVID-19…
In January 2019, YouTube announced it would exclude potentially harmful content from video recommendations but allow such videos to remain on the platform. While this step intends to reduce YouTube's role in propagating such content,…
We combine user-centric Twitter data with video-centric YouTube data to analyze who watches and shares what on YouTube. Combination of two data sets, with 87k Twitter users, 5.6mln YouTube videos and 15mln video sharing events, allows rich…
Online video services, messaging systems, games and social media services are tremendously popular among young people and children in many countries. Most of the digital services offered on the internet are advertising funded, which makes…
The ideological asymmetries have been recently observed in contested online spaces, where conservative voices seem to be relatively more pronounced even though liberals are known to have the population advantage on digital platforms. Most…
This study presents a data-driven analysis of COVID-19 discourse on YouTube, examining the sentiment, toxicity, and thematic patterns of video content published between January 2023 and October 2024. The analysis involved applying advanced…
User beliefs about algorithmic systems are constantly co-produced through user interaction and the complex socio-technical systems that generate recommendations. Identifying these beliefs is crucial because they influence how users interact…
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussions on the scholarly access to social media data, discussing a case where this access is barred despite its value for understanding and countering online disinformation and despite the absence…
Autocomplete is a popular search feature that predicts queries based on user input and guides users to a set of potentially relevant suggestions. In this study, we examine what YouTube autocompletes suggest to users seeking information…
Recommendation algorithms have become the dominant mechanism for information distribution on digital platforms, profoundly shaping personalized information consumption environments. However, gender bias, as a significant form of algorithmic…
Recent years have seen increased interest in the online presence of extreme right groups. Although originally composed of dedicated websites, the online extreme right milieu now spans multiple networks, including popular social media…
YouTube plays a key role in entertaining and informing people around the globe. However, studying the platform is difficult due to the lack of randomly sampled data and of systematic ways to query the platform's colossal catalog. In this…