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Coronavirus in YouTube videos and comments

Just a few months ago, YouTube filled world outrage with the ending of the Game of Thrones and the issue of racial diversity in games about medieval Europe. This magnificent era is already behind us, now the attention of the whole world is focused on issues of real life and death. And we are exploring the spread of COVID-19 on YouTube.

Alexander Suslov (School of Design, HSE), Anton Kostin (Department of Philosophy, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) .

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The YouTube video from 2015 is very short . In it, the Russian-American farmer Justas Walker laughs extremely cheerful, explaining the advantages of his mozzarella over Italian: “because he will not be there, your Italian cheese” - and a satanic laugh. The video has gained its views because Justas really looks like a movie supervillain. It was a funny video. In March 2020, this video sounds different - like Brodsky, who urged not to leave the room as early as 1970, it gets a new reading. In YouTube affords, this reading is implemented in an array of identical in content comments recorded in February and March of this year.

Our research on YouTube commentaries was usually a thing of the past - we took some phenomena, such as spam dislikes from video game trailers or dissatisfaction with the endings of Game of Thrones, and studied this as an event that had already happened. The coronavirus pandemic is still far from its peak, so we can collect data in almost real time.

By data, we usually mean comments on YouTube videos. We have always been interested in the patterns that take shape in this semantic sea. Commentators often act as the bearers of their special sovereignty - in the study of hate comments on video game clips, we found a direct opposition of those commenting on the authors of the video (the latter were usually the game companies themselves). Commentators can identify with the author of the video, sometimes through a very indirect form - for example, test blogger Creosan, who constantly conducts extremely dubious experiments, receives supporting comments in the form of safety concerns: “why are there no glasses?”, Despite the fact that in the background videos can explode shells (Creosan - a resident of Lugansk).

In the study of the coronavirus trail on YouTube, we decided to look closely at the videos themselves, too. Events develop rapidly, authors react, change their point of view, which also entails changes in the tone of comments - to study the video, we relied more on high-quality methods.

We formulated the working hypothesis of what the pattern will be “on the shore”, before the start of the study. It seemed to us that the pattern would be approximately the same both for the authors of the video and for the commenters. At the same time, for comments, we expected to find the effect of “stretched elastic” (we have not yet come up with a more harmonious name). What do we mean - the author of the video is forced to respond here and now, he can change his point of view only in the new video. Commentators, most likely (we are not sure - this is a hypothesis) will for the most part be absolutely in solidarity shortly after the publication of the video, this solidarity will continue for some time (delayed), but then, with a sharp change in the situation, we will see the replacement of solidarity with the opposition (they let go of the gum , she clicks the author of the video).

In addition to this effect, we hypothesized the following patterns:

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The hypotheses were based on historical analogies, in particular, the informational interpretation of the Mongol invasion. We do not undertake to do a historiographic analysis here, we immediately proceed to the generalization. The news of a certain threat from the East went west for a long time and constantly. The threat was consistently ignored in China, Khorezm, Iran, Russia, Poland and Hungary, and then in the same sequence to make rather panicky and poorly planned (despite the manifestations of heroism) attempts to counter. People did not want to believe in the threat of an invasion of unprecedented mougals, either considered themselves sufficiently protected by their fortresses, or considered the Mongols “ordinary steppes” who raid each year, but then still go back to their steppes. No one wanted to change their plans and ideas about reality, until he saw howSubedei-bagatur is getting off his horse in his yard.

Video types


We looked at a rather extensive array of videos in which you can see several basic patterns for authors - we will discuss the comments below separately. Videos were viewed only in Russian to narrow the field and avoid the intricacies of cross-country analysis.

Conspiracy Theory and YouTube


This is a very interesting genre in itself, since it has been successfully living on YouTube for a long time, very often contrasts itself with the “media” (we put in quotation marks as a special term from the language of such videos) and the official authorities, which can be understood as governments or academic the science. At the same time, conspiracy theological videos themselves always include paths and symbols of the official media (especially, of course, television), official, traditional science and signs of state power.

The most striking example: interview of GRU Colonel Kvachkov, in which he tells the presenter his version of the origin of the virus, reports on the causes of the economic crisis and gives a picture of the whole world structure. The video is preceded by a screensaver imitating the screensavers of federal television channels, there is a studio with a presenter in the frame, there is an “expert” person who is dressed in a military uniform (explicit affiliation with the state) and represents himself as a member of a secret government organization (GRU), which is by kind activity knows the extraction of important secrets.

Another example uses the analytic transmission paths: a sensible facilitator who sits at his desk, behind his back is a bookcase. The pace of speech is moderate, diagrams are actively used, arrows are drawn on terrain maps.

The third typical case- mimicry of a YouTube video for a documentary television movie in the spirit of “Criminal Russia” or revelatory broadcasts of the Ren-TV channel. There is no presenter in the frame, his speech is faster than that of the “analyst”, editing and insertions of numerous “talking heads”, fragments of other videos and all the same graphs and charts are very actively used.

Such videos can be called YouTube shows - they use the language of television for another communicative medium.

Expert Bloggers


Another group of videos is formed by bloggers who use the YouTube language and do not try to appropriate the “official” status. These are more mobile authors, responsive to the situation, who do not have a strict agenda - in return they offer much more than their personality, their life, their routine. In the early 2000s, it was called “lytdyber”, in the tenth years it was usually called “vlog”. We will analyze samples of different vloger types, which we will give in order to decrease the share of the “agenda” and increase the share of “personal”.

A blogger always builds his social capitalization on personality and charisma, even if it is a person who leads a culinary channel or talks about fishing. At the same time, it’s quite obvious that a blogger needs substantive expertise, a topic that he knows well and can tell viewers about it. In this sense, a blogger is an expert who, or who appeals to his professional experience in a certain field, discusses a wide range of problems, projecting his expertise on the material under discussion. This is not always a deliberate usurpation of expertise; sometimes bloggers can become experts for their audience simply because of their trust in them as “familiar” people who also have professional skills in a certain field. A classic example is Artemy Lebedev, who, as the owner of a design studio,He discusses a wide range of issues with a rather pronounced expert tonality in his voice.

Let's start with the closestto the YouTube models listed above. The author of the “Smart Doctor” channel develops a story about the fictitious nature of the pandemic, appealing to his status as a medical worker (very implicitly) and common sense (explicitly). Partly, the video language of his blog comes from Parfyonov's “The Last Day”, from which all our documentary journalism comes from - shooting on the street, lively manner of speech. In part, these are all the same analytical programs, with insertions of documentary shots, live video and off-screen commentary. At the same time, the blogger is not trying to pretend that he is a TV presenter of the federal channel - it is difficult to do this using a selfie stick. The second difference is that the changed assessment of the situation led to the effect of the gum: the audience, initially tuned benevolently to the author, returned three weeks later and instructed him with dislikes and poisonous comments.The blogger in the next issues acknowledged the fallacy of his position.

Another example is a girl named Karina, who built her fame on video game streams, and then managed to redistribute this capital to other platforms, in particular YouTube. Possessing already “default” expertise, celebrity expertise, she received situational expertise - permanently residing in Lombardy, Karina was at the very epicenter of the Italian hotbed of a pandemic. This is a vlog, but it’s a vlog of a person with a million ( Socialblade rough estimate ) subscribers: the girl declares the social orientation of her video, asks the audience for cooperation and adheres to the “appeal to the nation” style.

Third example- Vlog vykhinskogo hairdresser Vartan Bolotov. The author of the channel has been blogging for several years, mainly dealing with issues of hairdressing, but also cooking, gadgets, economics, touching on gender and other areas. In the video we selected, Vartan makes an appeal to the clients of his salon, but at the same time it is a psychotherapy session: just like the author mixes different topics in his channel, in one video Vartan postulates Moscow’s protection from the Italian epidemic scenario, support for government measures, fears about business losses , a declaration that even the worst crisis can be experienced in the country, and, finally, assurances that the clients of the salon will be provided with services even in the case of strict quarantine. It seemed to us that this is a rather piercing example of the impression of a Russian citizen, splashed out in video format.

A fourth example is another girl who is vlogging. Polina Sladkova, who moved with her parents from the Russian regional center to the USA, shows her audience the life of the American hinterland, the joys and difficulties of American high school students. In the video titled “Do I have a coronavirus?” the author shows his everyday life - there are no expert statements at all, this is a description of the surrounding reality as is. Polina ends the video with a message that her school is quarantined, shopping centers are closed and next week will apparently be at home. This is the latest video on the channel.

From video to comments


Our data is presented by comments on videos on YouTube. For analysis, we took the data from the issuance of YouTube at the request of “coronavirus” dated April 24, 2020.

The overall dynamics of the comments is presented by two slides, between which there was a period of calm.



The first slide takes a smaller period from mid-January to mid-February, the second - a larger one - begins in mid-March and continues to grow to the present.

To find out what was discussed before and after the lull, we divided the comments into two periods and visualized them as word clouds.

Here is a word cloud for the period from January 1 to February 15, 2020.



The “Chinese” theme is noticeable.

Now let's see the same for the period from March 1 to April 24.



The “Chinese” theme has practically disappeared, the “USA” is a little noticeable, but “Russia” stands out strongly.

Probably, from February 15 to March 1, the social agenda for the coronavirus changes, it ceases to be “Chinese” and is recognized as a common problem.

Now let's check which videos have become the most important events for commentators, is there an intersection with the frames we have outlined?

Another question that we will find out is which of the commentators determines the social agenda for the coronavirus.

To do this, we used the “ PageRank ” coefficient and assigned it to each video and commentator.

As a result, we got the top 10 videos.

The first place went to the video of General Kvachkov banned in Russia ( 1, pagerank: 0.017908).

Second place in the clip of Navalny ( 2 , pagerank: 0.017155).

Third place in the video of Sobolev ( 3 , pagerank: 0.012732).

Fourth place on the video clip “Kael” ( 4 , pagerank: 0.011084).

Fifth, sixth and seventh place on the rollers of Dr. Komarovsky ( 5 , pagerank: 0.010519, 6 , pagerank: 0.010355, 7 , pagerank: 0.010290).

Eighth place in the video clip of the “Amazing Facts” ( 8 , pagerank: 0.009971).

Ninth place in the Belarusian news blog “CTVBY” ( 9 , pagerank: 0.009339).

Final place on the blog “Vzalk Falk” ( 10, pagerank: 0.009009).

Surprisingly, the video of General Kvachkov was not only banned in the territory of the Russian Federation, but also beat famous pager bloggers. Achievement, however.

We divided the influential commentators into two conditional groups: known (with an audience of more than 1000 subscribers, that is, past the threshold of monetization) and unknown (less than 1000 subscribers).

Of the 10 top commentators on the pager, the second place (pagerank: 0.000045) is occupied by the famous commentator, and the first (pagerank: 0.000055), the third (pagerank: 0.000044), the fourth (pagerank: 0.000044), 6 e (pagerank: 0.000037), 8th (pagerank: 0.000034), 9th (pagerank: 0.000034) places are unknown. The 5th (pagerank: 0.000038), 7th (pagerank: 0.000037) and 10th (pagerank: 0.000033) went to commentators who closed the number of subscribers.

In general, a curious picture develops. It turns out that unknown commentators get their reputation and audience directly in the comments on videos on other people's channels.

We hypothesize that the time required for the targeted promotion of a video or commentary is too large to fit into the extremely intense dynamics of comments about coronavirus, and that is why the “wild cards” of YouTube come out of the shadows and become much more important than the usual figures of video bloggers.

A note on coronavirus would not be complete without visualizing the “coronavirus" on YouTube. Therefore, everyone can look at a dynamic graph with 302,052 vertices and 405,797 edges.



A little cartographic data in the explanation to the video. The core of the cluster is commentary on news stories, the cluster belt is commentary on the videos of bloggers. There is a separate cluster of the Cyrillic type in Bulgarian. There are isolated communities about coronavirus and football, as well as songs about the coronavirus.

The complex structure of the graph shows that the social agenda is not limited to a simple binary pair “denial - affirmation”. Rather, we are dealing with dissimilar representations of this topic in different communities.

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