YOUPOL

An observatory of political YouTube and TikTok.

YouPol tracks more than 100 political channels and accounts in France, Quebec and the United States. Using machine-learning and artificial-intelligence methods, the observatory collects, archives and analyses the videos, what they say and the reactions they draw from the public.

Seven days of content on YouTube and TikTok · 28 September to 4 October 2026

Political YouTube and TikTok, the last week in brief

Every video published by the tracked channels is transcribed, summarised and counted by our local models. This panel gathers the synthesis of the last seven days, the records to read, the themes, the public figures named, the arguments and the removals; the three countries together or one of them, as you choose.

360
videos published
343
transcribed
203
records
126
hours of speech
16.5M
views
The synthesis of the week
France · 28 September – 4 October 2026
Period
The synthesis proposed by our local model · last 7 days

Debates on Jordan Bardella's writings, education, and security in France

Content focuses on Mediapart's revelations regarding writings attributed to Jordan Bardella. Left-wing channels assert the authenticity of antisemitic and conspiracy-theory messages, analyzing the use of a communicational "showcase" to hide radical convictions. Conversely, some left-wing sources mention manipulation or "barbouserie," while Le Monde is accused by the left of favoring the demonization-reduction of the Rassemblement National.

Educational and social issues divide orientations. Both left-wing and far-right channels denounce the lack of resources and teachers, although the far-right attributes obstacles in research on Arab-Muslim slavery to the influence of the far-left. Regarding security, the far-right highlights rising delinquency in Creuse and the breach of the social contract. The left analyzes riots as a class struggle and denounces police violence against high school students and suburb residents.

The synthesis in full and the daily syntheses

Topics of the claims in 203 records: Institutions and democracy (16%), Security and justice (13%), Education and culture (12%), Gender and family (9%).

The records to readAll the videos

The most viewed videos of the week that have their record, written by our local model; each record opens in a side panel.

The themes, month by month Since 2016
August 2025 – October 2026 · mean share, per video, of the political sentences on each theme
Orientation
  1. Authority 12.8%
  2. Environment 7.9%
  3. Democracy 7.2%
  4. Progress 4.8%
  5. Tradition 4.0%
  6. Equality and inequality 3.6%
  7. Technology 3.5%
  8. Distrust of the state 3.5%
  9. Immigration 3.2%

October 2026: mean over 57 videos; each video counts once. Since 2016

The public figures most named The ranking
June – October 2026 · transcribed sentences naming them
List
  1. Jordan Bardella 905
  2. Jean-Luc Mélenchon 665
  3. Emmanuel Macron 554
  4. Marine Le Pen 538
  5. Donald Trump 255
  6. The Pope 238

Number of transcribed sentences naming them; bar: channel orientation; line: twelve months. Closed list of public figures. The full ranking

The arguments of the moment By theme
the first argument of each theme, drawn from the sentences of the last seven days and read again every day
  1. Mass immigration threatens the cultural identity and stability of the countryImmigration · Last 7 days
  2. Law enforcement officers are targeted by attacks and insults from protesters or youthAuthority · Last 3 months
  3. Elections and voting are essential tools for influencing party funding or powerDemocracy · Last 3 months

Arguments drawn by our local model from a sample of each theme’s political sentences, then checked against the sentences. All the arguments, by theme

Gone from the platforms… All
  1. Video creator's analysis of the geographical and social origins of the radical leftLAPIN DU FUTUR · unavailable, no reason given · 3 October 2026
  2. ADIEU ET PARDONLAPIN DU FUTUR · made private · 3 October 2026
  3. Street interview in Châtelet on ecology and its political affiliationVA Plus · unavailable, no reason given · 3 October 2026
  4. Critique of Left-Wing Feminism and Debate on Immigration and ViolenceLAPIN DU FUTUR · made private · 3 October 2026

108 videos removed in 120 days; a video transcribed before its removal keeps its record.

Latest transcripts5 h ago
Updated every hour; the last seven days, recomputed every day. The collection figures are in the counter, bottom left. Explore the observatory
The corpus

Three countries, two platforms, 89 channels

Each channel is chosen and coded by the team: an orientation, a country, a language. The far right is deliberately over-represented, to study it closely; the American channels, in English, are transcribed and summarised without going through the classifiers, which are trained on French.

Our method

Detect, extract, transcribe, classify, name, summarise

Six methods, run on the project’s computers, each documented with its models, thresholds and reliability. Pick a step.

01 · Detect

The channels’ RSS feeds are read every six hours; every week their full list of videos is reread. A detected video enters the queue with its date; those of the last seven days go ahead of everything else.

The detail in the method

Cadence
every 6 h, full listing every week
Priority
the last seven days first

The method in full · The methods paper (PDF) · Cite the project

The team

Three researchers

Tristan Boursier

Tristan Boursier

Postdoctoral researcher · co-lead

Sciences Po Paris · Université du Québec en Outaouais

Research design, orientation coding and political analysis.

Antoine Lemor

Antoine Lemor

Postdoctoral researcher · co-lead

Université de Sherbrooke · CIRST · RFICS

Methods, machine learning, infrastructure and website.

Arnaud Miranda

Arnaud Miranda

Research collaborator

CEVIPOF · Sciences Po Paris

Political theory and analysis of reactionary discourse.

The team and the affiliations · Write to us · Cite the project

Project paper