A study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research has found no strong evidence suggesting that YouTube promoted anti-vaccine sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic. Researchers examined whether YouTube's recommendation system guided users searching for vaccine-related content towards anti-vaccine material.
The study involved participants trained by the World Health Organization (WHO) in intentionally finding an anti-vaccine video with as few clicks as possible, starting from an initial informational Covid-19 video posted by the WHO. These users' recommendations were compared to related videos obtained from YouTube's application programming interface (API) and Up-Next recommended videos viewed by clean browsers without user-identifying cookies.
Over 27,000 video recommendations made by YouTube were analyzed using machine learning methods to classify anti-vaccine content. The study's lead author, Margaret Yee Man Ng, an Illinois journalism professor with an appointment in the Institute of Communications Research, stated, "We found no evidence that YouTube promotes anti-vaccine content to its users."
Throughout users' recommendation journeys, the average share of anti-vaccine or vaccine hesitancy videos remained below 6%. Researchers initially sought to understand YouTube's content recommendation techniques and whether they led users toward anti-vaccine sentiment and vaccine hesitancy.
The study aimed to develop recommendations for improving YouTube's handling of misinformation dissemination. Katherine Hoffmann Pham, a co-author of the study and a researcher at UN Global Pulse, explained, "Contrary to public belief, YouTube wasn't promoting anti-vaccine content. The study reveals that YouTube's algorithms instead recommended other health-related content that was not explicitly related to vaccination."
This research contributes to a better understanding of how social media platforms handle sensitive topics and the impact of recommendation systems on users' content consumption.
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Inputs from IANS
