The Future Of Trump’s COVID-19 Presidency Is Bleak, Even Among YouTube Commenters

An analysis of YouTube comments on videos related to coronavirus reveals rising distrust of President Trump’s ability to handle the crisis. If even YouTube commenters, generally a reviled sort of human, are against him, what are the president’s chances at reelection?

Most rational people don’t put too much stock in YouTube comments, and there’s something particularly awful about the ones on YouTube, especially when you look at the research. Now, it’s from 2014, but this PLOS ONE study reveals that YouTube trolls are more frequent and make more sexist, emotional, and irrelevant comments than on other parts of the Internet. The top Urban Dictionary definition for YouTube commenters is: “A specimen of the internet similar to the 4chan user but slightly less revolting.” High praise, indeed. “A YouTube commenter makes an account just to post comments, and typically will say anything that crosses his (or occasionally her) mind in 500 characters or less…They are always expressing their opinions no matter how socially acceptable they are.” 

Armed with this knowledge and in light of the current coronavirus pandemic, one might assume that the YouTube comments section of videos relating to coronavirus would be rampant with racism, xenophobia and conspiracy theories. One wouldn’t be quite wrong, but it’s not as bad as one would think.

YouTube has been making waves by seriously cracking down on the conspiracy theory videos it allows on its platform, all but eliminating anything related to 9/11 and flat-earth conspiracy theories. When you type “coronavirus” into the search bar, YouTube prompts you to get the latest info from the CDC before showing you a range of news videos on the topic. 

In other words, you’re getting reputable information. Whether or not this has resulted in a slightly less dicey breed of YouTube commenter, or whether the seriousness of the situation is prompting a different response than is expected (show of hands if you expected the conspiracy theories to run wild!) is unclear, but according to a recent analysis of YouTube comments, conspiracy theories about coronavirus in the United States have evolved into more reasonable fears about distrust, among other findings. 

Theo Goetemann, founder of Basil Labs, a big data consumer analytics company, analyzed hundreds of thousands of comments on the top coronavirus YouTube videos from February 24 to March 2, and then again from March 5 to March 12. He found that the first week of analysis showed a trend toward conspiracy theories, while distrust towards the number of reported cases and of the media trailed behind “overblown” or “rapidly spreading” narratives. But as COVID-19 spread across the states last week, distrust overtook conspiracies as the biggest narrative among commenters.

“So now we’re not seeing nearly as much talk about ‘biowarfare, China’s made this in a lab, it’s a big conspiracy,’” said Goetemann. “Now it’s home, it’s real, and people don’t trust the government on their numbers or how they’re handling this.” 

Comments two weeks ago like: “As long as horseface Rachel Maddow and the liberal media are complaining, I know that Trump is doing a wonderful job. We don’t live in the Soviet Union honey. The president doesn’t dictate whether you can get on planes or not,” from Mine Finder, or “Am I losing my mind here? They don’t know where these people got the virus from? They didn’t travel? They took people from the Diamond Princess Ship to Travis Airforce Base and then you find out people have coronavirus near the base. Is this such a mystery?” have made way to comments in the last week like: “The italian government and people are facing the problem head-on. instead many countries of the world hide the ‘real numbers’ of the infected people. after many years the Italian parties are collaborating with each other, as well as the citizens. but the European Union? where is it?” by luca, or “I can’t believe so many Americans are fooled by [Trump’s] BS we should test his IQs along with the coronavirus,” by a commenter called Johnny Walker.

One interesting finding from Goetemann’s analysis is that mentions of China have decreased significantly, corresponding with a sharp rise in comments about Trump. At the same time, mentions of Democrats have also seen a steady rise, although not as sharp, and mentions of United States government actions regarding the virus have decreased. In other words, the fingers of blame and general conversation has shifted from China for being the place of origin of the virus to Trump for his inadequate response. 

“People aren’t talking as much about the CDC and their lack of testing,” said Goetemann. “They’re talking about Trump. He’s gonna take the blame or the win.”

The leanings of these comments confirm what we already know: That this has become a highly politicized issue. Partisanship is already playing a role in how many Americans view the crisis, with conservatives rushing to defend Trump and labeling the Democrats “the Pandemic Party” while many liberals are still accusing Trump of failing to respond appropriately to the threat, downplaying the urgency. 

A Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows that Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to worry that they or someone they knew could catch the virus, whereas 63% of Republicans said they were relatively unconcerned. Granted, this could be because more Democrats tend to live in cities where the virus is more likely to spread. But it’s more conceivable that this is the result of the media that each side consumes, with conservative media more likely to follow the president’s lead and play down the crisis.

“Exposure to false websites, misinformation and disinformation all tend to run along these power laws with small numbers of people having large levels of exposure and vice versa. But what everyone has been exposed to is the conversation about fake news, so a lot of us have been worried not about the direct effect of being exposed to disinformation itself, but rather about the indirect effect of leaving people with a lingering sense that they can’t trust the news,” said Joshua Tucker, professor of politics and co-director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University. “And when you combine that with politicians who weaponize it and refer to people who oppose their policies or oppose them personally as fake news, it calls into question this larger ability to have an objective, free, fair, open press that’s able to hold people and power accountable.”

Tucker said that the president’s response to the coronavirus isn’t happening in a vacuum: It’s happening in a world where for years supporters of the president have been conditioned to think that news organizations that say things that are in opposition to the president can be called fake news. And a world where the president isn’t delivering the highest quality of scientific knowledge is “particularly pernicious because of this climate we’ve conducted,” said Tucker.

“Mr. Trump has essentially become a bystander as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president,” writes Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker for The New York Times. “As he confronts the most serious crisis of his tenure, President Trump has been assertive in closing borders to many outsiders, one of his favorite policies,”

One of the tropes of right wing nationalist populism has always been exclusion of the Other. “I think this falls right into this rhetoric of ‘We have to protect our borders. We have to protect the nationality of this country from the infection of other people,’” said Tucker. 

While the closing borders narrative definitely appeals to Trump’s base, it hasn’t seen nearly as much action in YouTube comments as straight up trashing Trump has, according to Goetemann’s analysis. 

“There’s something different about the coronavirus as opposed to the Mueller report,” said Tucker. “Trump can say that everything in the Mueller report is made up, it’s a witch hunt, it’s lies. But the Mueller report was never going to affect people’s personal lives. When Trump says that the coronavirus is not a big deal, we’re handling it, everyone can get tested, and suddenly people’s children can’t go to school anymore, their parents are getting sick and hospitalized, and there are no test kits, that’s a lot harder to pound on as fake news.”

So will this be the straw that breaks the never-ending support for Trump among his followers? 

“Whether this translates from a momentary distraction into sustained concern about the president’s leadership is a question for politics,” said Tucker. “The one thing we know as political scientists that really affects elections is the state of the economy. If this pushes the country into a recession, that will make it much harder for Trump to get reelected.”

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the U.S. economy was doing quite well. “Any other president who has an economy with the sort of growth and unemployment that Trump has had would have seen approval ratings in the upper 50s, if not in the 60s. We have not seen what happens to Trump’s approval rating (which is currently around 42%) with a poorly performing economy.”

Tucker said that voters are myopic. When it comes to the economy, they don’t look at the first three years of a president’s term, but tend to focus on the second quarter of the election year, which is what we’re headed into. The conversation among YouTube commenters focuses steadily, but not increasingly, on the economic impact of the coronavirus, but that might just be the deciding factor in this year’s presidential election. 

Trump is working on an emergency stimulus package to boost the economy, suggesting a $800 billion payroll tax cut plan that would dwarf President Obama’s stimulus package from the 2008 economic recession.

“We’re in unprecedented territory here because we’ve never seen this kind of a health crisis in the country that’s had this kind of an effect this quickly, so it could be even worse for him if it turns out to be the case that people think he’s fundamentally mismanaged this,” said Tucker. “All in all with the caveat that he seems to have incredibly loyal supporters, so we have to sort of wait and see.”