IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v12y2022i2p21582440221094587.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding Political Polarization Based on User Activity: A Case Study in Korean Political YouTube Channels

Author

Listed:
  • Giang T. C. Tran
  • Luong Vuong Nguyen
  • Jason J. Jung
  • Jeonghun Han

Abstract

This study proposes a novel approach for measuring political polarization using a user-activity-based model. By exploiting data from comments, user activity in this study is defined based on features such as coverage, duration, and enthusiasm. To determine these features, we collect information on the activities of users from South Korean YouTube channels. Notably, the collected data of the model contains approximately 11 M comments from more than 600 K users based on 37 K videos of 77 YouTube channels. To handle the big data collection, we deploy a web-based platform called TubePlunger to collect video information (e.g., comments, replies, etc.) automatically from YouTube channels. The output of the model reveals that the users are strongly polarized because the number of neutral users is very small (approximately 8% of the total). We then applied this model to the other channels in the testing dataset to define polarization with a bias percentage and to visualize the user activity distribution. The experimental results show that there are 30 fully polarized YouTube channels (16 left-wing channels and 14 right-wing channels) with a measured bias ratio higher than 70%. Our method of analyzing social network data based on user activity provides the foundation for polarization analysis that can be applied to fields other than politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Giang T. C. Tran & Luong Vuong Nguyen & Jason J. Jung & Jeonghun Han, 2022. "Understanding Political Polarization Based on User Activity: A Case Study in Korean Political YouTube Channels," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:12:y:2022:i:2:p:21582440221094587
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440221094587
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440221094587
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440221094587?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthew S. Levendusky, 2013. "Why Do Partisan Media Polarize Viewers?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 611-623, July.
    2. Tim Groseclose & Jeffrey Milyo, 2005. "A Measure of Media Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(4), pages 1191-1237.
    3. Luong Vuong Nguyen & Jason J. Jung, 2020. "Crowdsourcing Platform for Collecting Cognitive Feedbacks from Users: A Case Study on Movie Recommender System," Springer Series in Reliability Engineering, in: Hoang Pham (ed.), Reliability and Statistical Computing, pages 139-150, Springer.
    4. David Strömberg, 2004. "Mass Media Competition, Political Competition, and Public Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 265-284.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon P. Anderson & John McLaren, 2012. "Media Mergers And Media Bias With Rational Consumers," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 831-859, August.
    2. Larcinese, Valentino & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder, James M., 2011. "Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1178-1189.
    3. Frijters Paul & Velamuri Malathi, 2010. "Is the Internet Bad News? The Online News Era and the Market for High-Quality News," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 1-33, June.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7jk88md0ar9hga662p2vjjq4kc is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Corneo, Giacomo, 2006. "Media capture in a democracy: The role of wealth concentration," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 37-58, January.
    6. John Duggan & César Martinelli, 2008. "The Role of Media Slant in Elections and Economics," Wallis Working Papers WP54, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    7. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2006. "Political competition when media create candidates’ charisma," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 345-366, June.
    8. Timothy Besley & Andrea Prat, 2006. "Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 720-736, June.
    9. Cagé, Julia, 2020. "Media competition, information provision and political participation: Evidence from French local newspapers and elections, 1944–2014," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    10. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2014. "Citizen-editors' endogenous information acquisition and news accuracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-53.
    11. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2009. "Indirect Lobbying and Media Bias," MPRA Paper 18215, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Chun-Fang Chiang & Brian Knight, 2011. "Media Bias and Influence: Evidence from Newspaper Endorsements," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(3), pages 795-820.
    13. Maria Battaggion & Alessandro Vaglio, 2015. "Watchdogs, Platforms and Audience: An Economic Perspective on Media Markets," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 43(2), pages 209-228, June.
    14. Halberstam, Yosh & Knight, Brian, 2016. "Homophily, group size, and the diffusion of political information in social networks: Evidence from Twitter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 73-88.
    15. Biondo, A.E. & Pluchino, A. & Rapisarda, A., 2018. "Modeling surveys effects in political competitions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 503(C), pages 714-726.
    16. Baron, David P., 2004. "Persistent Media Bias," Research Papers 1845r, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    17. Baron, David P., 2006. "Persistent media bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 1-36, January.
    18. Hon Foong Cheah, 2016. "Does foreign media entry discipline or provoke local media bias?," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 335-359, December.
    19. David Strömberg, 2015. "Media and Politics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 173-205, August.
    20. Ashworth, Scott & Shotts, Kenneth W., 2010. "Does informative media commentary reduce politicians' incentives to pander?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 838-847, December.
    21. Schroeder, Elizabeth & Stone, Daniel F., 2015. "Fox News and political knowledge," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 52-63.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:12:y:2022:i:2:p:21582440221094587. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.