Partisan and News Content on YouTube during 2019 Federal State Elections in Germany

Abstract

YouTube has emerged as one of the most commonly used plat-forms for entertainment, information and political communi-cation, for media consumers as well as professional commu-nicators. News organizations and political parties alike haveadopted strategies for publishing video content–rangingfrom already broadcasted news programs to political speechesof local party members. In this ongoing study we interrogateYouTube ranking algorithm on the occasions of three fed-eral state elections in Germany. We retrieved ranked searchresults for every parties leading candidate in the elections,as well as the comments and replies which YouTube deter-mines as relevant for each video occurring in the rankings.Preliminary results show that content dealing with and con-tent authored by far-right parties is most widely consumedand interacted with. The ranking of the content is relativelystable over time but partially interrupted by short phasesthat jumble the previous order.