Annett Heft, lead of the Research Group Dynamics of Digital Mobilization at the Weizenbaum Institute and Freie Universität Berlin, published an article with Curd Benjamin Knüpfer (Free University of Berlin) and Carsten Schwemmer (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich) on the Politicization and Right-Wing Normalization on Youtube: A Topic-Based Analysis of the “Alternative Influence Network” in the  International Journal of Communication.

The study addresses a gap in current research on YouTube’s actual content. Built on Lewis’s (2018) classification of an “alternative influencer” network, the study applies structural topic modeling across all text-based autocaptions from her study’s sample to identify common topics featured on these channels and to trace politicization over time. The researchers find that political topics increasingly dominate the focus of all analyzed channels, and the convergence of culture and politics occurs mainly about identity-driven issues. Furthermore, they observe that numerous extreme channels do not form distinct clusters, instead the channels blend into the larger content-based network. Lastly, their findings illustrate how political topics may function as connective ties across an initially more diverse network of YouTube influencer channels.

The full paper is available as an open-access publication.