YouTube

To what extent does the YouTube recommendation algorithm push users into echo chambers, rabbit holes, or radicalization pathways? Using a novel method to estimate the ideology of YouTube videos and an original audit design, we find that YouTube users experience mild ideological echo chambers, but these appear to be driven primarily by user behavior.  We also demonstrate that the recommendation algorithm prioritizes content that is similar to what the user is currently watching, producing “content rabbit holes”. However, we do not find evidence of radicalization pathways where users are driven into increasingly extreme content rabbit holes. Instead, we find that YouTube’s recommendations move users, regardless of ideology, toward moderately conservative content and an increasingly narrow range of ideological content the longer they follow YouTube’s recommendations.

Social media is used by millions of Americans to access news and politics. Yet there are no studies, to date, examining whether these behaviors systematically vary for those whose political incorporation process is distinct from those in the majority. We fill this void by examining how Latino online political activity compares to that of white Americans and the role of language in Latinos’ online political engagement. We hypothesize that Latino online political activity is comparable to whites. Moreover, given media reports suggesting that greater quantities of political misinformation are circulating on Spanish versus English-language social media, we expect reliance on Spanish-language social media for news predicts beliefs in inaccurate political narratives. Our survey findings, which we believe to be the largest original survey of the online political activity of Latinos and whites, reveal support for these expectations. Latino social media political activity, as measured by sharing/viewing news, talking about politics, and following politicians, is comparable to whites, both in self-reported and digital trace data. Latinos also turned to social media for news about COVID-19 more often than did whites. Finally, Latinos relying on Spanish-language social media usage for news predicts beliefs in election fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.