Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube: The Spread of Misinformation Videos on Social Media and the Effectiveness of Platform Policies

Aleksi Knuutila; Aliaksandr Herasimenka; Hubert Au; Jonathan Bright; Rasmus Nielsen; Philip N Howard

Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube: The Spread of Misinformation Videos on Social Media and the Effectiveness of Platform Policies

Aleksi Knuutila
, Aliaksandr Herasimenka
, Hubert Au
, Jonathan Bright
, Rasmus Nielsen
, Philip N Howard

Sociology

Research output: Working paper › Scientific

Abstract

For this memo, we identified all Covid-related videos which circulated on social media, but which YouTube eventually removed because they contained false information. Between October, 2019 and June, 2020 there were 8,105 such videos - less than 1% of all YouTube videos about the coronavirus. We find that:
• It took YouTube on average 41 days to remove videos containing false information, based on a subset of videos for which this data was available.
• Surprisingly, Covid-related misinformation videos do not find their audience through YouTube itself, but largely by being shared on Facebook.
• Facebook placed warning labels about false information only on 55 videos, less than 1% of the misinformation videos shared on the platform.
• Misinformation videos were shared almost 20 million times on social media, which is more than the shares gathered by the five largest English-language news sources on YouTube combined (CNN, ABC News, BBC, Fox News and Al
Jazeera)

Original language	English
Place of Publication	Oxford
Publisher	Oxford Internet Institute
Edition	2020.5
Volume	Comprop Data Memos
Number of pages	7
Publication status	Published - 2020
MoE publication type	D4 Published development or research report or study

Fields of Science

5141 Sociology

Access to Document

https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2020/09/Knuutila-YouTube-misinfo-memo-v1.pdf

Cite this

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title = "Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube: The Spread of Misinformation Videos on Social Media and the Effectiveness of Platform Policies",

abstract = "For this memo, we identified all Covid-related videos which circulated on social media, but which YouTube eventually removed because they contained false information. Between October, 2019 and June, 2020 there were 8,105 such videos - less than 1\% of all YouTube videos about the coronavirus. We find that: • It took YouTube on average 41 days to remove videos containing false information, based on a subset of videos for which this data was available. • Surprisingly, Covid-related misinformation videos do not find their audience through YouTube itself, but largely by being shared on Facebook. • Facebook placed warning labels about false information only on 55 videos, less than 1\% of the misinformation videos shared on the platform. • Misinformation videos were shared almost 20 million times on social media, which is more than the shares gathered by the five largest English-language news sources on YouTube combined (CNN, ABC News, BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera)",

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TY - UNPB

T1 - Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube

T2 - The Spread of Misinformation Videos on Social Media and the Effectiveness of Platform Policies

AU - Knuutila, Aleksi

AU - Herasimenka, Aliaksandr

AU - Au, Hubert

AU - Bright, Jonathan

AU - Nielsen, Rasmus

AU - Howard, Philip N

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - For this memo, we identified all Covid-related videos which circulated on social media, but which YouTube eventually removed because they contained false information. Between October, 2019 and June, 2020 there were 8,105 such videos - less than 1% of all YouTube videos about the coronavirus. We find that: • It took YouTube on average 41 days to remove videos containing false information, based on a subset of videos for which this data was available. • Surprisingly, Covid-related misinformation videos do not find their audience through YouTube itself, but largely by being shared on Facebook. • Facebook placed warning labels about false information only on 55 videos, less than 1% of the misinformation videos shared on the platform. • Misinformation videos were shared almost 20 million times on social media, which is more than the shares gathered by the five largest English-language news sources on YouTube combined (CNN, ABC News, BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera)

AB - For this memo, we identified all Covid-related videos which circulated on social media, but which YouTube eventually removed because they contained false information. Between October, 2019 and June, 2020 there were 8,105 such videos - less than 1% of all YouTube videos about the coronavirus. We find that: • It took YouTube on average 41 days to remove videos containing false information, based on a subset of videos for which this data was available. • Surprisingly, Covid-related misinformation videos do not find their audience through YouTube itself, but largely by being shared on Facebook. • Facebook placed warning labels about false information only on 55 videos, less than 1% of the misinformation videos shared on the platform. • Misinformation videos were shared almost 20 million times on social media, which is more than the shares gathered by the five largest English-language news sources on YouTube combined (CNN, ABC News, BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera)

KW - 5141 Sociology

M3 - Working paper

VL - Comprop Data Memos

BT - Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube

PB - Oxford Internet Institute

CY - Oxford

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