Infodemics on Youtube: Reliability of Content and Echo Chambers on COVID-19 (Preprint)

• DOI: 10.2196/preprints.32258
• Publication Date: 2021-07-23T15:32:16Z
• Authors: Niccolò Di Marco; Matteo Cinelli; Walter Quattrocio...
• Keywords: Echo (communications protocol); Preprint; Consumption

<sec> <title>UNSTRUCTURED</title> Social media radically changed how information is consumed and reported elicited a disintermediated access to an unprecedented amount of content. The world health organization (WHO) coined the term infodemics identify overabundance during epidemic. Indeed, spread inaccurate misleading may alter behaviours complicate crisis management responses. This paper addresses diffusion COVID-19 pandemic period with massive data analysis on YouTube. First, we analyze more than 2M users’ engagement in 13000 videos released by 68 different YouTube channels, political bias fact-checking indexes. We then investigate relationship between each user’s preference her/his consumption questionable/reliable information. Our results, quantified using theory measures, provide evidence for existence echo chambers across two dimensions represented trustworthiness channels. Finally, observe that chamber structure cannot be reproduced after properly randomizing interaction patterns. </sec>