Exploring User Responses to Entertainment and Political Videos: An Automated Content Analysis of YouTube

On YouTube, videos are always presented together with additional user-generated information about those videos. This social information is presented in the form of number of views, (dis)likes, or comments. However, we know little about the characteristics of social information about entertainment videos. To fill this gap, the present study examined the amount and valence of online entertainment videos’ social information and compared this to the social information of online political videos. An automated content analysis of (dis)likes, views, and 39,602 comments presented alongside 463 videos showed that entertainment videos received more views and comments than political videos. Moreover, entertainment videos’ comments were more neutral than political videos’ comments. We also found that comments with a stronger positive or negative valence received more replies and likes, with the exceptions that the positive valence of political videos had no effect and that, for political videos, a stronger negative valence led to fewer likes. Finally, we found that as political videos received more comments, the positive valence of their comments became more consistent. Overall, these results show that the type of video influences the amount and valence of social information the video receives.