A "vacina" nas plataformas : (des)informação científica no YouTube antes e durante a pandemia de Covid-19 no Brasil

Abstract

This thesis investigates how scientific information and misinformation in videos on the topic “vaccine” were articulated with the sociotechnical dimensions of YouTube platform before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. This objective is developed using as an object of study the “most relevant” and “most viewed” videos about vaccines on the platform for thirty months (from January 2019 to June 2021), which allows us to explore changes in the resulting scenario from the COVID-19 pandemic (from early 2020). The research is located at the interface between the field of studies known by the acronym STS, for Science and Technology, and media studies, under the methodology inspired by platform studies and digital methods. In the introduction, we discuss the STS research field and the concept of Technoscience, which permeate the thesis. We approach “disinformation” in a broad way, and then we delve into the specifics of scientific disinformation and health misinformation. In chapter two, when studying the vaccine as a matter of interest in Brazil, we make a brief history of vaccination in the country, explore the “vaccination culture” in Brazil and vaccine hesitancy, and analyze the relationship between the vaccine and the scenario of COVID-19 pandemic, including anti-vaccine sentiments and anti-vax movement. In addition, we analyze the vaccine issue as a controversy. In chapter three, we present the platforms and their dimensions: governance, data and algorithms, business models, infrastructures and practices and affordances, and we analyze YouTube as a platform. The research also explores how YouTube's governance and algorithmic mediation changed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand policies for moderation, monetization and recommendation of content considered reliable or disinformative. Finally, in chapter four, data on the “most relevant” and “most viewed” videos about “vaccine” collected before and after the beginning of the pandemic are analyzed. The perspective of digital methods guides the development of each stage of the research, which leads us to consider the context of the platforms where the data are inserted. The results are grouped into data visualizations that allow observing the dynamics of video classification over time and understanding how the circulation dynamics of vaccine videos on YouTube has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, a list of channels with anti-vaccine content identified in the analysis is presented. Among the results of the thesis, an increase in the institutional efforts of the platform to moderate the circulation of disinformation videos and a greater “relevance” attributed to recent videos on the subject stand out.