YouTube as a source of information about unproven drugs for Covid-19: The role of the mainstream media and recommendation algorithms in promoting misinformation

Abstract

In this study, we address how YouTube videos promote misinformation about the unproven drugs for Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in Brazil. Furthermore, we explore how YouTube’s recommendation system might fuel information crises. We follow two research questions. RQ1: How is pro-hydroxychloroquine content propagated on YouTube? RQ2: How does YouTube’s recommendation system suggest videos about hydroxychloroquine on the platform? We use mixed methods to explore a dataset of 751 videos collected via the YouTube API v3. We use content analysis to categorize the videos according to the content and the type of channel. We use social network analysis to explore a network based on YouTube’s recommendation of videos. We found that the majority of pro-HCQ YouTube videos in our dataset are posted by the mainstream media, most of which reproduce content from free-to-air television channels (RQ1). We also identified a tendency of homophily in the recommendations among pro-HCQ videos and that YouTube was more likely to recommend pro-HCQ videos than anti-HCQ videos (RQ2). The main contribution of our study is the identification of how the Brazilian mainstream media and YouTube’s algorithms fueled the spread of pro-HCQ content.