Trusted Media on YouTube : volume and visibility of public media in search results

Introduction: This research aims to describe the treatment of news content coming from public media in YouTube search results. Methodology: To this end, by using the platform's API, search results were extracted for a set of 4 keywords over 60 days. Results: The analysis indicates that public media are a minority (3,70%) among the channels appearing in the search results, and they do not achieve better positions in the search results ranking. However, the algorithm proportionally selects more content from public media than from other sources, causing an overrepresentation of this type of media. Content published by public media also reappears more frequently in search results and lasts longer. Private media also receive slight benefits, at the expense of native channels and other sources, which are underrepresented in the search. Conclusions: The results suggest that YouTube selectively favors media outlets in search results, especially public ones, selecting more content from them, which indicates a curation and moderation process of content in the search aimed at limiting the appearance of misinformation. With this, YouTube would be trying to redirect audience attention to safe sources in contexts where misinformation exists, implying the invisibilization of other sources and not applying direct censorship to potentially harmful content.