CAMRI | Connective Politics, Videos, and Algorithms: YouTube’s Mediation of Audiovisual Political Communication

Connective Politics, Videos, and Algorithms: YouTube’s Mediation of Audiovisual Political Communication

A Book Chapter by Andrea Medrado, published by Visual Political Communication

In the 2018 Brazilian Elections, the PSOL Party launched Sonia Guajajara (from APIB) and Guilherme Boulos (from MTST) as candidates for President and Vice-President. This decision fit into a strategy of “connective politics” in which the party engaged in a dialogue with these movements’ causes, turning them into relatable personalised messages and incorporating them into the electoral campaign. In order to illustrate this, we chose one video from each of the social actors (PSOL, MTST, APIB) and used YouTube’s Data Tools to map out each video’s network of related videos. We hope to shed light on how YouTube mediates political audiovisual content through its recommendation system.

Keywords: YouTube. Social movements. Political parties. Connective politics.

Photo by Rafaela Biazi on Unsplash

About Andrea Medrado

Andrea Medrado is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Media and Communication of the University of Westminster. She is also the Course Leader for the BA Digital Media and the leader for the Cultural Identities and Social Change theme at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). Her research focuses on digital media activism and artivism as tools for social change in the Global South and on creative and participatory approaches to analysing marginalised communities’ information security needs and everyday engagements with artificial intelligence (AI). Her book Media Activism, Artivism and the Fight Against Marginalisation in the Global South was published by Routledge in 2023. She has also published in leading academic journals and contributed to several edited book collections. Andrea is currently the Vice President of IAMCR, the largest international association in the field of media and communication.