Analisando o Uso de uma Grande Rede de Streaming de Vídeos na Divulgação de Conteúdo Político

YouTube as a video platform currently has a ubiquitous presence in the dissemination of online content. As such, marketers and content creators are expected to make use of YouTube to spread products and ideas. In this article, we analyze the traffic of political videos and video advertisements on YouTube during the 2018 elections. Our analysis is conducted through synthetic network personas designed to simulate human behavior. Over a period of approximately 40 days, we simulated voters from different states (via VPNs), gender (through account settings), and political alignment (through access to channels classified as left, center, and right). During the experiment, the different personas were susceptible to video advertisements that are paired with videos accessed automatically. Based on the collected data, we present a study focusing on three aspects: (1) channel content popularity characteristics; (2) the difference in advertising exposure between different personas; (3) an analysis of parties that made most use of the platform.