Abstract
The information channels available to citizens have not stopped growing in the last twenty years. Since the emergence of blogs, new digital media and social networks, the plurality of information sources is multiplying every few years. Many academics have wondered about the effects of this multiplicity of channels on political opinions and behavior. Thus, new concepts have emerged that try to uncover the most worrying effects, such as filter bubbles or echo chambers. In particular, one of the major concerns of scholars is the perceived polarization in many democratic societies, which is linked to the rise of these new forms of communication. However, the studies conducted are not uniform in this respect, showing significant differences in many societies. This research aims to contribute to the debate on polarization in social media. Specifically, it analyzes the polarization of a highly conflictive episode in Spanish politics: the 2017 independence crisis in Catalonia. This has been based on a comparative analysis of the polarization present in traditional media, videos on YouTube and the comments to these videos. In total, more than 10,000 news stories, 193 videos and more than 80,000 comments have been analyzed. The polarization analysis has been made from a highly modified version of sentiment analysis. The results show that the information on YouTube is indeed more polarized than in the traditional media outlets, especially comments. But there are also variables that make the media analyzed show substantial differences.
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García-Marín, J. (2021). YouTube and Traditional Media: Polarization in the Catalan Political Conflict. In: Musiał-Karg, M., Luengo, Ó.G. (eds) Digitalization of Democratic Processes in Europe. Studies in Digital Politics and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71815-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71815-2_3
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