YouTube Is Becoming an Important Medium for Belarusians

Millions of Belarusians watch political bloggers on YouTube, receive news there and join discussions of political issues.

Belarusian researchers have analysed this new media space and presented the results of their research.

The Political Sphere Institute and ePramova conducted a study of Belarusian political YouTube and its main trends.

The researchers analysed around 300 channels of Belarusian state and non-state media, democratic and pro-government bloggers, political and civic organisations from 2019 to 2022.

We spoke in more detail about the research findings with one of the authors, the head of the Political Sphere Institute, Andrei Kazakevich.
– At the moment, we cannot calculate the audience of Belarusian YouTube with 100% certainty.

For now, we are only making estimates.

Research needs to continue, and then we will be able to record the figures.

At the moment, we estimate that 2 million people regularly receive socio-political information about Belarus.

Of them, 1.5 million receive such information through Belarusian channels on YouTube.

This is about 30% of the adult population.

This is quite a significant segment, and it is clear that YouTube is turning into an important field of political communication in Belarus.

Over the past year, Belarusian YouTube has grown, the researcher says.
– In 2021-22, political YouTube in Belarus grew significantly, and both the clearly pro-democratic segment and the state segment grew as well.

Telegram, by contrast, shrank, at least the main channels did.

Therefore, YouTube is becoming an important space of political communication.

The situation of independent bloggers and channels looked rather good.

For state resources, the main factor of growth was the war in Ukraine.

Before that, they had had no serious dynamics for two years, but during the war their growth increased several times over.

What is this connected with?
– Most likely, it follows from the fact that most of their audience are not Belarusians.

At the same time, this is an opportunity for them to mobilise people who are in Belarus.

We are talking about people who previously watched channels about how to grow potatoes, and during the war they begin to come across videos from state channels; some of them may stay there.

If we talk about non-state channels, the point of growth there was the events of 9 August 2020.

Will the same work for state channels?

It is hard to say for now; most of their views are provided by the Russian audience.

What was the situation before the war?
– Before the war, there was dominance of the non-state sector, approximately 1 to 3.

The audience of non-state resources is more loyal; there are more likes, more interaction, and a more stable dynamic.

Pro-government bloggers often have a situation where they get several hundred views.

Then a video appears with a million views because it has entered Russian contexts.

On non-state channels, there are still no such large fluctuations between views.

Before the war, independent channels dominated, and after the war everything became mixed.

Now it is difficult for us to determine the balance.

All resources have grown dozens of times; the new balance will be known in a few months.

State propaganda is so far growing only on international affairs, the expert notes.
– Belarusian state channels are growing and have good indicators in views and likes only in what we called international politics.

This is the war in Ukraine, events in international affairs.

If we take the domestic politics segment, things are much worse there.

Independent channels dominate there, especially when we talk about reactions to videos.

What is political YouTube in Belarus, what dominates there, what topics?
– We identified 260 channels that mainly broadcast socio-political content.

We consider their content to be Belarusian political YouTube.

Three topics dominate on these channels: domestic politics, Belarus’s foreign policy and international politics.

Since late February, international politics has grown significantly; there has simply been an explosion.

A fairly popular section is news, where a complex set of information is presented.

There are more independent channels here; state channels focus on other things.

Topics such as the economy, the social situation, culture and sport are peripheral for these channels.

The war in Ukraine became the leader this year.

What findings were the biggest surprise for you?
– As a researcher, I was surprised that Belarusian YouTube has grown significantly compared with 2020.

Many in the expert community say that interest in politics is falling and interest in independent media is declining.

For websites and Telegram, this is true, but YouTube has grown.

Now, after the war, it is reaching new heights.

Source (https://www.polskieradio.pl/396/7815/Artykul/2986688,YouTube-%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%96%D1%86%D1%86%D0%B0%C2%A0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%BC%C2%A0%D0%A1%D0%9C%D0%86-%D0%B4%D0%BB%D1%8F-%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%9E)