YouTube Comment Analysis Highlights Problem Of “Fake News” And Coronavirus

A recent analysis of YouTube comments left on certain news stories related to coronavirus demonstrates the extent to which the problem of “fake news” has the power to hinder important health discussions. The study looked at three videos from major news organizations about the potential of coronavirus to spread through aerosols, and found that 64.2% of the major topics discussed within the comments mentioned “fake news.”

Basil Labs, a consumer intelligence company that analyzes virtual communities using AI, analyzed around 3,500 YouTube video comments from Bloomberg, CBS and Yahoo! Finance videos. Each news story demonstrates the ways that the virus can spread through the air at a distance of more than six feet in certain conditions, like being inside a small and poorly ventilated space, or includes explainers from medical professionals or CDC representatives. 

This has been the longest year of all our lives, but nevertheless, COVID-19 is still a new disease. Researchers are finding out more about it everyday, and we expect them to alert news organizations to share that information with the public as they come across it. Understanding that experts believe coronavirus to be airborne as well as spread through surfaces is not particularly surprising, but the distrust people have in the media could lead to dire consequences — namely, ignoring the new findings because it’s believed to be “fake news.”

As of March 2018, 52% of Americans felt that online news websites regularly report fake news stories, and another 34% believe that they occasionally report fake news stories. We can only assume that number has gone up as a result of coronavirus misinformation and President Trump’s persistent campaign against the media. 

“A breakdown of topics present in the comments section of the Bloomberg video shows an overwhelming focus on the media and ‘fake news,’ followed by ‘Trump’ and ‘Democrats.’ In many other countries, while resulting policies may be debated, the legitimacy of the mounting research that supports COVID-19 aerosol transmission is itself not questioned,” said Theo Goetemann, founder of Basil Labs. 

Below the Bloomberg video called “Can Shutting Up Stop the Spread of COVID-19?”, comments about fake news took the form of hating the media in general — as one YouTube commenter wrote, “I wish that Bloomberg QuickTake and the rest of the mainstream media would shut up.” — or aggressively musing about the lies and scams surrounding coronavirus information, a la: “Media next week: thinking about the virus causes it to spread within a 20 feet radius around you” or “They want you to shut up and not talk about the election, and how they’re going to lie and cheat their way through it. Don’t fall for this.”

In addition to calling out Democrats as the source of much angst, many of the comments also found a way to weave in smack-talking about the Black Lives Matter protests. For example on the same Bloomberg video, one commenter wrote: “Thanks for admitting those angry mobs spitting, spewing, and screaming in mass crowds needs to stop. This is the best we’re gonna get from the media anyway.” Another scribed, “Tell that to the whiny liberals, they’re the ones screaming at people all the time.”

“While these comments are by far not a representative sample of the nation, it’s worrying to see that among the individuals who brought up the vaccine, 81% did not trust it and even more worrying that only 6% of those individuals had questions on its general efficacy — 67% focused on the lies of the media and the CDC.”

It is important to reiterate that YouTube commenters do not necessarily reflect the whole of the populace, but they’re certainly a very loud portion of the populace. According to media engagement study from the University of Texas at Austin, Americans who leave news comments are more often male, have lower levels of education and have lower incomes compared to those who just read news comments. These demographics tend to align with the demographics of Trump supporters, and that much is clear in the comments. 

“Similarly, the overwhelming mentions of Democrats were negative while the mentions of Trump were split between pro-Trump comments and comments discussing the massive amount of Trump support the comments thread had received,” said Goetemann. 

One comment that encapsulates this sentiment reads, “This just in: saying the word ‘Trump’ spreads more coronavirus droplets than saying the word ‘Biden.’”

“These comments reflect the post-fact reality of our nation,” said Goetemann. “We are far beyond political polarization, where facts may be spun in favorable ways to further policies or ideological stances. The discussion of COVID-19 aerosol transmission never arrived at differences of opinion in regards to proposed safety policies, but rather remained immobilized by challenges to the legitimacy and trust in authoritative sources of information and scientific research.”