Examining the Role of YouTube Production and Consumption Dynamics on the Formation of Extreme Ideologies
This research addresses the understudied problem of how content production and consumption dynamics on YouTube contribute to ideological shifts, particularly towards extremism, for users of the platform.
This paper investigates the interplay between content production and consumption on YouTube and its role in the formation of extreme ideologies. Analyzing one year of watch history and two ideological surveys from 1,100 U.S. participants, the study found that users shifting towards extreme ideologies exhibit distinct consumption habits, which are amplified by channels producing content with higher anger and grievance markers.
The relationship between content production and consumption on algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube plays a critical role in shaping ideological behaviors. While prior work has largely focused on user behavior and algorithmic recommendations, the interplay between what is produced and what gets consumed, and its role in ideological shifts remains understudied. In this paper, we present a longitudinal, mixed-methods analysis combining one year of YouTube watch history with two waves of ideological surveys from 1,100 U.S. participants. We identify users who exhibited significant shifts toward more extreme ideologies and compare their content consumption and the production patterns of YouTube channels they engaged with to ideologically stable users. Our findings show that users who became more extreme consumed have different consumption habits from those who do not. This gets amplified by the fact that channels favored by users with extreme ideologies also have a higher affinity to produce content with a higher anger, grievance and other such markers. Lastly, using time series analysis, we examine whether content producers are the primary drivers of consumption behavior or merely responding to user demand.