Regular monthly monitoring of Belarusian state-owned media YouTube channels. The Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission (LRTK) continued its cooperation with Google and on Wednesday ordered the YouTube platform to remove 18 accounts of Belarusian radio stations and TV channels that are included in the European Union (EU) sanctions list.
Methodology Data were collected using YouTube API v3. Processing and visualization were performed using Python libraries—pandas, numpy, plotly, sklearn, Dash.
The results of the third quarter of 2024 are summarized in the table:
As can be seen, the number of published materials did not change during the quarter. The decrease in the number of views in September compared to August 2024 is associated with reduced interest and the number of materials reporting on events in the Kursk region.
Nine Belarusian YouTube channels that belong to state-owned media gathered in September 2024 more views of materials posted in these months than in July 2024 by 34%, despite the temporary blocking of some channels in all European Union countries and the implemented blocking in Lithuania. The number of materials posted per month remained at the same level during the third quarter of 2024.
Daily distribution of publication views and the number of views of these publications:
It is evident that the number of materials posted decreases on Saturdays (September 7, 14, 21).
Visualization of the basic characteristics of the studied channels:
The channel of the news agency BelTA still gathers a large number of comments relative to the number of views.
Content Top 20 videos that gathered the most views:
The channels that gathered the most views all used disinformation narratives about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is also disinformation about NATO and flooding in Europe, which can be attributed to climate disinformation.
Now let’s exclude shorts videos (less than 60 seconds) and see how the list of most viewed videos changes:
Still, apart from apples and piano playing, there are no materials directly related to Belarus. Besides disinformation on the war in Ukraine, there is various kinds of inaccurate information about the economy in European Union countries.
Now let’s select only thematic programs with a duration of more than 10 minutes:
If we don’t repeat the disinformation narratives, we can note that the entry threshold into the top twenty is about 200,000 views.
Engagement
A K-means cluster analysis was performed. This is a machine learning method used to divide a dataset into groups (clusters) with similar characteristics. K-means works by iteratively assigning data to clusters based on proximity to centroids, which are the mean values within each cluster.
A dynamic K-means chart based on data from 1,834 posts published in September 2024. For an in-depth analysis of the engagement of videos posted on state YouTube channels, a Quadrant Chart was built.
On the chart, each point corresponds to an individual video on the YouTube channel. This chart allows you to visualize and analyze the popularity and engagement of the videos. The X-axis is the watch time, the Y-axis is the number of likes. The size of the point on the chart corresponds to the number of comments under the video. Larger points indicate videos that are actively discussed by viewers, which may indicate significant interest in the topic. The color of the points ranges from cool (less saturated colors) to warm (more saturated colors) depending on the number of views. More saturated colors indicate videos with a larger number of views.
History of Blocking Belarusian State YouTube Channels
On September 19, it was reported that at the request of the Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission (LRTK), YouTube removed the accounts of Belarusian entities included in the sanctions list. The following channels were named: ATN, “Belarus 1”, “Belarus 2”, “Belarus 3”, “Belarus 5”, “Belarus 4. Brest”, “Belarus 4. Vitebsk”, “Belarus 4. Gomel”, “Belarus 4. Grodno”, “Belarus 4. Mogilev”, Factor.by, ZonaX, Radius-FM, Radius fm house, Radius fm house, Stalitsa Radio, Radio1, and Radio Belarus.
Indeed, using the web scraping tool Oxylabs WebScraper API, it was observed how these channels were blocked in various European Union countries, but literally the next day they became available again in all countries except Lithuania, as, for example, the renamed channel ATN: news of Belarus and the world to NEWS.BY: news of Belarus and the world
It can be seen that the videos posted over the past two weeks continue to gather views.
Conclusion
As can be seen from the analysis conducted, Belarusian state-owned YouTube channels continue to confidently participate in hybrid warfare. They spread disinformation narratives both for the Belarusian internet audience in the country and abroad.
