Join us for another iteration of the online Archive/Counter-Archive Working Papers Series, which brings together PhD students from different universities to hear about exciting academic research in the area of archival studies. Our next speaker is Cate Alexander, a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Cate’s talk will be followed by a Q&A with the audience, moderated by our student organizers, Emily Barton and Elina Lex. Register for this event on Thursday, November 28, 2024 with the following link, https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcodumhrzwjGtXT8ZZwa6rvlf9cUAOfGnHT.
THE BIASES OF YOUTUBE CONTEXT PANELS: DIGGING THROUGH THE INTERNET ARCHIVE AND DECONSTRUCTING BLACK BOXES
Historical conspiracies and misinformation thrive on YouTube—but what happens when YouTube’s strategies to address them only amplify the problem? In 2018, YouTube introduced context panels: short blurbs extracted from ‘reputable’ third party sources that appear in a blue box at the top of some searches and directly beneath certain videos. For example, a search for videos on the Apollo program results in a blue context panel at the top of the search results with information about the program taken from Wikipedia. My presentation examines how these context panels compound several problems: the biases of which historical topics are selected; the biases of the YouTube algorithm; and the biases of the third party sources.
When the context panels were introduced, journalists criticized them for pushing responsibility onto individual consumers and failing to address the root cause of algorithmic bias that help to propagate conspiracy videos. EU Disinfo Lab has also identified the strong American bias in the context panels that prioritize American concerns while allowing misinformation in other regions to thrive. Five years after the launch of these context panels, I investigate them specifically through the lens of public history, situating their impact on formations of cultural memory on the Internet. My arguments are based on my digital ethnographic observations, my digging through the Internet Archive, and my many spreadsheets tracking the application of context panels.
In her book on queer archives, Ann Cvekovitch describes “the quest for history as a psychic need.” More and more, people turn to the Internet to fulfill their thirst for learning about the past. Through their use of social media and other platforms, digital history content creators are destabilizing notions about who holds authority as a historian and how people engage with the past. However, their work is always filtered and warped by the black box logics of platforms and their algorithms. My investigations of the YouTube historical context panels contributes to a better understanding of how platforms construct access to the past.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
Cate Cleo Alexander (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Prior to U of T, Cate obtained a BA Combined Honours in History and Classics and a MA in Digital Humanities at the University of Alberta. Her lifelong passion for history has taken her from archaeological field digs in Kastro Kallithea (Greece) and Roccagloriosa (Italy) to the digital realms of online archives. Her dissertation examines digital history content creation in order to establish a better understanding of how social media platforms and content creators influence cultural memory. When she is not studying cultural heritage, digital humanities, or media theory, Cate can be found social dancing or watching old movies at The Revue.