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.

Enter the observatory The method The methods paper (PDF)
Seven days of content on YouTube and TikTok · 29 September to 5 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.

354
videos published
336
transcribed
183
records
126
hours of speech
15.4M
views
The synthesis of the week
France · 29 September – 5 October 2026
Period
The synthesis proposed by our local model · last 7 days

Investigation into Jordan Bardella's writings and insecurity in La Souterraine

Mediapart published an investigation into writings attributed to Jordan Bardella between 2013 and 2015, described as antisemitic and influenced by Alain Soral. Clément Viktorovitch claims these messages rely on antisemitic fantasies and serve to maintain Jean-Marie Le Pen's ideology under a banalized storefront. Jordan Bardella denies authorship of these remarks, denouncing a "barbouserie operation" the same channel.

Vincent Lapierre documents an increase in crime and degradation in La Souterraine, Creuse. He asserts that the State no longer respects the "social contract" as taxes no longer guarantee security. An intervenant in this video attributes these disturbances to "migrants" the same channel.

Le Fil d'Actu - Officiel argues that the government uses the Russian threat as a diversion to hide the failure of economic policies regarding rising fuel prices. Meanwhile, GoldenBoy and Castor Carnassier discuss high school mobilizations, describing them respectively as "fascism" to silence opponents and as "riots" encouraged by a political party.

Generated by our model on 5 October 2026 at 04:00 from the 14 following videos:

The synthesis in full and the daily syntheses

Topics of the claims in 183 records: Institutions and democracy (16%), Security and justice (14%), Gender and family (11%), Education and culture (11%).

The records to readAll the videos

The most viewed videos of the week, in each country, whose content synthesis is produced by our local model; each opens in a side panel.

France354 videos
The themes, month by month Since 2016

Coming soon. The theme classifiers are trained on French. Their English counterparts will soon be trained and deployed. Meanwhile, this country’s channels are transcribed and summarised.

The public figures most named The ranking
June – October 2026 · transcribed sentences naming them
List
  1. Jordan Bardella 1,030
  2. Jean-Luc Mélenchon 695
  3. Marine Le Pen 573
  4. Emmanuel Macron 568
  5. The Pope 264
  6. Donald Trump 258

Number of transcribed sentences naming them. The bar gives the channel orientation, the line the last twelve months. Closed list of public figures. The full ranking

The arguments of the moment By theme
the first arguments of each theme, drawn from the sentences of the last seven days and read again every day
  1. The police commit violence and misconduct during their interventionsAuthority · Last 7 days
  2. France is a Christian land and must preserve this religious heritageTradition · Last 7 days
  3. The high cost of fuel weighs on purchasing power and causes social tensionsEnvironment · Last 7 days
  4. Current society is in cultural and intellectual declineProgress · Last 7 days
  5. The state and public spending are inefficient and harmful to the economyDistrust of the state · Last 7 days
  6. Mass immigration threatens the cultural identity and stability of the countryImmigration · Last 7 days
  7. Artificial intelligence is used to manipulate information or create misleading contentTechnology · Last 7 days
  8. 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. FRANCE TRAVAIL : RÉVÉLATIONS SUR UNE AFFAIRE D'ÉTATBLAST, Le souffle de l'info · made private · 4 October 2026
  2. Video creator's analysis of the geographical and social origins of the radical leftLAPIN DU FUTUR · unavailable, no reason given · 3 October 2026
  3. ADIEU ET PARDONLAPIN DU FUTUR · made private · 3 October 2026
  4. Street interview in Châtelet on ecology and its political affiliationVA Plus · unavailable, no reason given · 3 October 2026

109 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. It gets an orientation, a country and a language. The far right is deliberately over-represented, to study it closely. The English-language corpus was extended in October 2026. Its videos are transcribed and summarised, and its classifiers will soon be trained and deployed.

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.

WebsiteWrite
Antoine Lemor

Antoine Lemor

Postdoctoral researcher · co-lead

Université de Sherbrooke · CIRST · RFICS

Methods, machine learning, infrastructure and website.

WebsiteGitHubWrite
Arnaud Miranda

Arnaud Miranda

Research collaborator

CEVIPOF · Sciences Po Paris

Political theory and analysis of reactionary discourse.

WebsiteWrite

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

Project paper