A serious issue for such an important source of news and other information in Belarus as the video platform YouTube is what content gets into the Trends.
Methodology
The monitoring period was four weeks. The Oxylabs WebScraper API web scraping tool was used to obtain the results.
What YouTube writes about its “Trending” section:
The “Trending” section features videos that are currently popular on YouTube and may be of interest to many viewers. Here you can find a variety of videos: regular and short ones, music videos by famous artists, movie trailers, and even viral videos. The “Trending” section is not personalized; all viewers in a specific country are offered the same selection of popular videos. Therefore, the language of the video and the browser language may not match. The selection is updated approximately every 15 minutes; some videos may move to the top of the page, while others may move to the bottom. What factors determine the appearance of a video in the “Trending” section and its ranking in the list?
- Interesting to a wide audience;
- Not shocking or misleading;
- Reflect the breadth of what’s happening on YouTube and in the world;
- Demonstrate the creative and cultural diversity of creators;
- Appear unexpected or unusual.
The system strives to find the optimal combination of all these factors. At the same time, a variety of metrics are taken into account, including:
- How many views the video has;
- How quickly the number of views is increasing;
- Where the video is being watched, including outside of YouTube;
- Time since publication;
- The video’s popularity compared to recently published videos on the channel.
YouTube’s algorithms use a combination of these indicators to compile a list of videos that will help understand what’s happening on YouTube and will be relevant to viewers, reflecting the diversity of the platform’s content. Therefore, videos with fewer views may occupy the top positions in the list.
Data Obtained as a Result of the Experiment One of the goals of this experiment was to study the number of socio-political videos in YouTube trends for the Belarusian internet audience in the country.
Let’s consider two successful cases of videos appearing in Belarusian YouTube trends.
On August 17, 2024, the Varlamov channel (5.15 million subscribers, 3.32% of subscribers from Belarus) released the video Belarus. Four years after the protests | Lukashenko, Kolesnikova, Tikhanovskaya, Babaryko, Tsepkalo. This video gathered 1.1 million views a month after publication.
The publication was supported by two posts in the Telegram channels Ilya Varlamov (295 thousand subscribers) and Varlamov News (1.245 million subscribers)
As can be seen, these posts supporting the film gathered 590,000 and 492,000 views:
On August 19, 2024, the concert by Slava Komissarenko “The Barn Is on Fire, Let the House Burn” was published. The channel has 1.48 million subscribers (7.9% from Belarus).
Before the publication of the video, there was a surge of interest in Slava Komissarenko, as on August 16, the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus announced that an in-absentia investigation had begun against comedian Slava Komissarenko. He is accused under three articles of the criminal code, including insulting Alexander Lukashenko. By the way, one of the key Telegram channels that reported about the investigation was Ilya Varlamov’s channel.
Slava Komissarenko is accused under three articles of the criminal code, including defamation and insulting A. Lukashenko.
A graph has been constructed showing the change in the number of views when socio-political videos were in the trends of Belarusian YouTube:
An exponential growth in views of Slava Komissarenko’s concert is visible on the graph during the first two weeks of being in YouTube Trends.
The film “Failed Revolution” remained in Belarusian trends for three weeks, and the concert “The Barn Is on Fire, Let the House Burn”—four weeks!
On the other hand, a video by the channel CTVBY, with state ownership, was in trends for only 5 days. Also, it should be noted that three videos of this channel were “short videos” / shorts (less than 60 seconds).
Conclusions
- Entertainment and youth content, predominantly produced in the Russian Federation, is predominantly represented in YouTube trends in Belarus. Socio-political content may contain elements of disinformation, which poses a threat to the information security of the Belarusian internet audience in the country.
- The successful example of the long-term presence in trends of Slava Komissarenko’s concert “The Barn Is on Fire, Let the House Burn” shows that through entertainment and humorous content it is possible to promote sharp, largely political issues that concern Belarusians in the country and abroad.
- The presence of content promoted by the YouTube channel of the Belarusian TV channel CTVBY with state ownership shows that it is possible to promote disinformation content, taking into account the features of YouTube algorithms.
- It is recommended to conduct constant, regular monitoring of YouTube trends in Belarus and neighboring countries. Conduct deep, qualitative analysis of successful socio-political content that gets into trends, to develop your own communication campaigns.
