We also performed discourse analysis to understand not only the content but also the social contexts wherein they reside. Through the network visualization tool Gephi, we performed cluster analysis and determined the communities to which these news channels belong. We used social network analysis to map the identified “news” channels with the rest of the channels in the 2022 YouTube Election recommendation network. Methodologyįrom an initial corpus of over 20,000 videos from May 2021 to February 2022 which contained or are related to election keywords, we filtered the channels and videos based on the recurring presence of keywords such as “news,” “balita” or similar expression, excluding those that are considered mainstream news outlets (e.g., ABS-CBN, CNN Philippines). In other words, these YouTube channels make “news” about themselves – their politicians, their political agenda, and their political schemes – until they create a coherent political reality that can both withstand and co-exist with mainstream news media. We examine how the YouTube channels that produce this kind of “news” function to overexpose audiences to partisan content through a mass, coordinated network fortified by the platform’s recommendation system. In this paper, we investigate a distinct breed of “news” that infuses online news genres, hyperpartisanship and disinformation on YouTube during the 2022 Philippine Elections. This confluence of human-machine interactions determines what news stories reach which audiences, appear in a particular position in the feed, and are recommended with other content, thereby affecting the visibility, circulation, and impact of news on public life. The precarity of the news genre is exacerbated by the “secondary gatekeeping” of users, platforms, and algorithms. “Fake news” as a popular form of disinformation also invokes the genre to propagate false, fabricated or manipulative information in the “look and feel of real news.” These developments shape audiences’ preconceived notions of “newsness” and consequently, the role of news media in discourse and democracy. As political polarization intensifies globally, hyperpartisan news normalizes extreme political bias and transgressive reporting styles in media institutions. Scholars from Journalism Studies and Online Participatory Journalism have examined the changing news production conventions in online news, emphasizing their departure from traditional news values and adoption of participatory journalism. But what counts as “news” has become a contentious subject.
In the post-truth era, news matters more than ever. The full copy of the research is reposted with permission. “The rise of Meta-partisan ‘news’ ecosystems on YouTube” is a study presented by authors from the Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory (PMM) in the sixth #FactsFirstPH research briefing held on April 13, 2022.
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