Science on YouTube: What users find when they search for climate science and climate manipulation
This research addresses the problem of misinformation in science communication on popular platforms like YouTube, which affects public understanding and trust in climate science.
The study investigated the types of information users encounter when searching for climate science and climate manipulation topics on YouTube, finding that the platform presents a mix of scientific consensus and misleading content, based on an analysis of 140 videos.
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 of science and technology, but the users of YouTube are also confronted with conspiracy theories and erroneous and misleading information that deviates from scientific consensus views. This contribution details the results of a study that investigates what kind of information users find when they are searching for climate science and climate manipulation topics on YouTube and whether this information corresponds with or challenges scientific consensus views. An innovative methodological approach using the anonymization network Tor is introduced for drawing randomized samples of YouTube videos. This approach was used to select and examine a sample of 140 YouTube videos on climate topics.