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

Sosiologi

Forskningsoutput: Arbetsdokument › Vetenskaplig

Sammanfattning

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)

Originalspråk	engelska
Utgivningsort	Oxford
Utgivare	Oxford Internet Institute
Utgåva	2020.5
Volym	Comprop Data Memos
Antal sidor	7
Status	Publicerad - 2020
MoE-publikationstyp	D4 Publicerad utvecklings- eller forskningsrapport eller studie

Vetenskapsgrenar

5141 Sociologi

Åtkomst av dokument

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

Citera det här

@techreport{57861bc8e41f45a1a636724bdc541716,

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 AlJazeera)",

keywords = "5141 Sociology",

author = "Aleksi Knuutila and Aliaksandr Herasimenka and Hubert Au and Jonathan Bright and Rasmus Nielsen and Howard, {Philip N}",

year = "2020",

language = "English",

volume = "Comprop Data Memos",

publisher = "Oxford Internet Institute",

address = "United Kingdom",

edition = "2020.5",

type = "WorkingPaper",

institution = "Oxford Internet Institute",

}

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 AlJazeera)

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 AlJazeera)

KW - 5141 Sociology

M3 - Working paper

VL - Comprop Data Memos

BT - Covid-Related Misinformation on Youtube

PB - Oxford Internet Institute

CY - Oxford

ER -