Generic conventions in YouTube reponse videos drives online harassment campaigns
Over the last decade YouTube “response videos” in which a user offers counterarguments to a video uploaded by another user have become popular among political creators. While creators often frame response videos as debates, those targeted assert that they function as vehicles for harassment from the creator and their networked audience. Platform policies, which base moderation decisions on individual pieces of content rather than the relationship between videos and audience behavior, may therefore fail to address networked harassment. We analyze the relationship between amplification and harassment through qualitative content analysis of 15 response videos. We argue that response videos often provide a blueprint for harassment that shows both why the target is wrong and why harassment would be justified. Creators use argumentative tactics to portray themselves as defenders of enlightened public discourse and their targets as irrational and immoral. This positioning is misleading, given that creators interpellate the viewer as part of a networked audience with shared moral values that the target violates. Our analysis also finds that networked audiences act on that blueprint through the social affordances of YouTube, which we frame as harassment affordances. We argue that YouTube’s current policies are insufficient for addressing harassment that relies on amplification and networked audiences.
Media systems are embedded in democracy and thus implicated in the current decline of democracy
In the interdisciplinary field of misinformation and disinformation studies, there has been no consistent answer to the question of ‘what can and should platforms be responsible for in the context of democratic decay’ (i.e., a context in which democratic institutions, structures, norms, and governance are eroding)? In this paper, Kreiss and Barrett take up this question in light of several relevant literatures on democracies in transition towards more authoritarian or ‘hybrid’ regimes, or more broadly, literatures examining the deterioration of core democratic processes, institutions, and governance mechanisms.
Our review of this literature reveals that we lack good theoretical and empirical understandings of media systems in relation to democratic decay, especially the roles played by platforms. To address this, the authors conceptually outline several indirect effects of platforms on democratic decay, focusing on their roles in shaping public opinion and political institutions. In doing so they bring two academic literatures together: 1) work on democratic decay that often fails to consider media and platforms, and 2) work on platforms that often focuses narrowly on public opinion and attitudes, overlooking institutional democratic processes
Lack of standardization among platform political ad policies and products is causing problems for democracy
In the wake of the 2016 Brexit and U.S. presidential elections, the major platform companies including Facebook (and Instagram), Google (and YouTube), and Twitter implemented significant changes in the scope of the products and services they offer as well as their policies for working in institutional politics, especially in the context of digital political advertising. For example, all three companies rolled out verification processes for political advertisers and ad databases for the public. Facebook ended commissions on political ad sales and its “embed” program with campaigns. Google placed restrictions on political microtargeting and Twitter ended political advertising entirely and placed restrictions on what it has named “cause-based” advertising. This paper analyzes the policies and products of platform companies with respect to digital political advertising in the U.S. Our focus is on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and YouTube) and the advertising capabilities that you can access through them, as well as Google search and the Google display
network.