YouTube Videos on the Achievements of Presidential Candidates: Sentiment and Content Analysis

This study investigated the sentiments of YouTube users in their comments and the contents of YouTube videos from news outlets and political vloggers about the accomplishments of two Philippine presidential candidates in the May 2022 national election. The researchers used sentiment analysis to analyze the four corpora (two corpora for each presidential candidate) containing a total of 322,201 users' comments. A total of 74 videos were analyzed. Political vlogs tend to elicit more positive responses than news outlets. News outlets and specific journalists were perceived to be biased. Both presidential candidates received positive feedback from political vlogs in general. Both candidates received praise and criticism from YouTube users. Both competing politicians tend to receive more positive feedback in political vlogs. In contrast, only a specific politician may receive higher positive feedback from YouTube users who watch videos from news outlets. Word analysis on political vlogs about one candidate's accomplishments revealed that her accomplishments resulted from her dedication to public service. In contrast, the other candidate's accomplishments were closely related to his father's. None of the first candidate's accomplishments were labeled as untrue, whereas fact-checkers labeled a few of the other candidate's accomplishments as false. The implications of the findings are discussed.