Disinformation about COVID-19 on YouTube: Dynamics, Tactics and Actors

• Grant number: 21/09008-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2022
• End date: September 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Leda Maria Caira Gitahy
• Grantee: Dayane Fumiyo Tokojima Machado
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Recently, YouTube established itself as a significant source of health disinformation. The impacts of this content have been even more worrying during public health crises, such as H1N1, Zika, and Ebola epidemics. Besides amplifying extremist and denialist materials, the platform is criticized for their YouTube Partner Program, that also supports producers of dangerous content. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, more than a quarter of the most viewed videos in English about the coronavirus had misinformation. In the last months, the company committed to reducing the recommendation of these kinds of content, besides removing ads and other monetization resources from channels that violate their Community Guidelines. However, the current literature shows that these rules may not be enforced. This problem can be even more complex if considering content in languages other than English. This project proposes, first, a manual classification for Covid-19 disinformation in Portuguese extracted from YouTube videos. These videos will be transcribed and will be compiled as a dataset. Then, they will be classified according to a specific protocol to disinformation, based on the current literature on the theme.