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Examining the Role of YouTube Production and Consumption Dynamics on the Formation of Extreme Ideologies
Journal article   Open access

Examining the Role of YouTube Production and Consumption Dynamics on the Formation of Extreme Ideologies

Sarmad Chandio and Rishab Nithyanand
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, Vol.20(1), pp.407-420
05/25/2026
DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v20i1.42645
url
https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v20i1.42645View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

The relationship between content production and consumption on algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube plays a critical role in shaping ideological behaviors. While prior work has largely focused on user behavior and algorithmic recommendations, the interplay between what is produced and what gets consumed, and its role in ideological shifts, remains understudied. In this paper, we present a longitudinal, mixed-methods analysis combining one year of YouTube watch history with two waves of ideological surveys from 1,100 U.S. participants. We identify users who exhibited significant shifts toward more extreme ideologies and compare their content consumption and the production patterns of the channels they engaged with to ideologically stable users. Our findings show that users who became more extreme consumed have different consumption habits from those who do not. This gets amplified by the fact that channels favored by extreme users also have a higher affinity to produce content with a higher anger, grievance and other such markers. Lastly, using time series analysis, we examine whether content producers are the primary drivers of consumption behavior or merely responding to user demand.

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