Affective publics in Arabic YouTube

An analysis of 67,725 YouTube comments related to socio-political topics in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria reveals a predominantly negative emotional register across the Arabic YouTube sphere. The study indicates the presence of a single regional 'affective public' rather than distinct national ones, characterized by similar negative sentiment and emotional profiles. While a shared emotional landscape exists, regional variations manifest through discourse focused on country-level political actors and shared historical traumas. Notably, Iraq is singularized by a heightened register of grief.

Why it matters

This research provides insights into the collective emotional disposition and online discourse patterns within a significant geopolitical region. Understanding the dominant negative sentiment and the formation of a singular regional 'affective public' is crucial for informing digital engagement strategies, public opinion analysis, and cross-cultural communication efforts.

Key insights

• Analysis of 67,725 YouTube comments concerning socio-political topics in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.
• A unified sentiment-and-emotion pipeline was used for data analysis.
• Results indicate a single regional 'affective public' rather than five separate national ones.
• Sentiment is overwhelmingly negative across all five country-oriented corpora.
• Country-level emotion profiles are structurally similar.
• Discourse is organized around country-level political actors and cross-border historical trauma figures.
• Grief appears to singularize Iraq from the other countries, indicating a regional variation within the shared emotional landscape.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03269