YouTube radicalization research emerges

Sources

1. 01.

   Tufekci, Z. (2018). YouTube, the Great Radicalizer. The New York Times. Published 10 March 2018. nytimes.com returns HTTP 403 to automated clients; read from the recorded capture, whose payload was checked. An op-ed reporting the author's own observation of recommendation behaviour on two accounts she created herself, not a controlled study; cited for the claim's entry into public debate, not as evidence of the effect.

   www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.htmlopen_in_newinventory_2archived copy
2. 02.

   Lewis, R. (2018). Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube. Data & Society Research Institute. Published 18 September 2018. datasociety.net returns HTTP 403 to automated clients; read from the recorded capture, whose payload was checked. Presents data on roughly 65 political influencers across 81 channels to identify an 'Alternative Influence Network' that adopts brand-influencer techniques. Its mechanism is influencer collaboration and audience sharing — 'social networking between influencers makes it easy for audience members to be incrementally exposed to' more extreme positions — not algorithmic recommendation.

   datasociety.net/library/alternative-influenceopen_in_newinventory_2archived copy
3. 03.

   Ribeiro, M. H., Ottoni, R., West, R., Almeida, V. A. F., & Jr., W. M. (2020). Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube. Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '20), 131-141. Finds commenter migration from milder to more extreme channel communities over 2006-2018. Supports the migration claim; the authors are explicit that they do not isolate the recommendation algorithm as the cause.

   arxiv.org/abs/1908.08313open_in_new
4. 04.

   Munger, K. & Phillips, J. (2022). Right-Wing YouTube: A Supply and Demand Perspective. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(1), 186-219. Argues audience demand rather than algorithmic supply explains the growth — 'the novel and disturbing fact of people consuming white nationalist video media was not caused by the supply of this media radicalizing an otherwise moderate audience, but merely reflects ... the presence of audience demand' — and reports that 'viewership of far-right videos peaked in 2017'. Cited as the counter-position. The publisher URL (journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1940161220964767) returns HTTP 403 to automated clients and its Wayback captures are the journal landing page carrying only the abstract, so this citation points instead at the authors' own copy of the version of record, which was read in full. The DOI above is the canonical identifier and its Crossref record confirms the volume, issue, pages and dates given here.

   kmunger.github.io/pdfs/ijpp_youtube.pdfopen_in_new
5. 05.

   Hosseinmardi, H., Ghasemian, A., Clauset, A., Mobius, M., Rothschild, D. M., & Watts, D. J. (2021). Examining the consumption of radical content on YouTube. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32), Browser-history panel study; finds consumption of far-right content concentrated among users who also seek it off-platform, and no evidence of algorithm-driven onward drift.

   arxiv.org/abs/2011.12843open_in_new
6. 06.

   Chen, A. Y., Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Robertson, R. E., & Wilson, C. (2023). Subscriptions and external links help drive resentful users to alternative and extremist YouTube videos. Science Advances, 9(35), Finds exposure concentrated among users with high prior racial and gender resentment, reached mostly via subscriptions and off-platform links rather than recommendations.

   arxiv.org/abs/2204.10921open_in_new