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Down the (white) rabbit hole: the extreme right and online recommender systems

O'Callaghan, Derek, Greene, Derek, Conway, Maura orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-4216-8592, Carthy, Joe and Cunningham, Padraig (2015) Down the (white) rabbit hole: the extreme right and online recommender systems. Social Science Computer Review, 33 (4). pp. 459-478. ISSN 0894-4393

Abstract
In addition to hosting user-generated video content, YouTube provides recommendation services, where sets of related and recommended videos are presented to users, based on factors such as co-visitation count and prior viewing history. This article is specifically concerned with extreme right (ER) video content, portions of which contravene hate laws and are thus illegal in certain countries, which are recommended by YouTube to some users. We develop a categorization of this content based on various schema found in a selection of academic literature on the ER, which is then used to demonstrate the political articulations of YouTube’s recommender system, particularly the narrowing of the range of content to which users are exposed and the potential impacts of this. For this purpose, we use two data sets of English and German language ER YouTube channels, along with channels suggested by YouTube’s related video service. A process is observable whereby users accessing an ER YouTube video are likely to be recommended further ER content, leading to immersion in an ideological bubble in just a few short clicks. The evidence presented in this article supports a shift of the almost exclusive focus on users as content creators and protagonists in extremist cyberspaces to also consider online platform providers as important actors in these same spaces.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Extreme Right; Categorization; Recommender Systems; Topic Modeling; YouTube
Subjects:Social Sciences > Identity
Social Sciences > Communication
Computer Science > Digital video
Social Sciences > Speech
Social Sciences > Racism
Computer Science > Algorithms
Computer Science > World Wide Web
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science
Research Institutes and Centres > Centre for International Studies (CIS)
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Law and Government
Publisher:SAGE Publications
Official URL:http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/15/08...
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:VOX-Pol, European Union, Framework Programme 7, 2CENTRE, the EU funded Cybercrime Centres of Excellence Network, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2289
ID Code:20280
Deposited On:29 Oct 2014 14:47 by Maura Conway . Last Modified 27 Aug 2018 13:38
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