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 · 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.

412
videos published
352
transcribed
180
records
135
hours of speech
17M
views
The synthesis of the week
France · 29 September – 5 October 2026
Period
The synthesis proposed by our local model · last 7 days

Mediapart Investigation into Jordan Bardella and Insecurity in La Souterraine

Mediapart reveals antisemitic and conspiracy-theory writings attributed to Jordan Bardella between 2013 and 2015. Clément Viktorovitch claims that these messages testify to a structural ideology of the Rassemblement National. Jordan Bardella denies being the author of these remarks and denounces a 'barbouzerie' operation.

Vincent Lapierre documents a rise in delinquency and burned cars in La Souterraine, in the Creuse department. He claims that the State no longer respects the social contract because taxes no longer guarantee security. Contributors to the report attribute these disturbances to migrants.

GoldenBoy relates his experience during student mobilizations in Saint-Denis and Paris 8. He claims to have been prevented from debating and describes this refusal as fascism. The videographer validates the police intervention against individuals he calls rioters.

Le Fil d'Actu - Officiel links the rise in fuel prices to geopolitical chaos in the Middle East. The channel argues that the government uses the Russian threat as a diversion to mask the failure of economic policies. This narrative would serve to impose a United States of Europe project.

The synthesis in full and the daily syntheses

Topics of the claims in 180 records: Institutions and democracy (16%), Security and justice (14%), Education and culture (11%), Gender and family (10%).

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.

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 14.6%
  2. Equality and inequality 11.7%
  3. Progress 6.7%
  4. Environment 5.9%
  5. Tradition 5.8%
  6. Distrust of the state 5.5%
  7. Democracy 5.2%
  8. Technology 3.5%
  9. Immigration 2.8%

Mean over 77 videos in October 2026. Each video counts once. Since 2016

The public figures most named The ranking
June – October 2026 · transcribed sentences naming them
List
  1. Jordan Bardella 1,038
  2. Jean-Luc Mélenchon 752
  3. Emmanuel Macron 617
  4. Marine Le Pen 602
  5. The Pope 264
  6. Donald Trump 261

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
Gone from the platforms… All
  1. Quel ALCOOL ton pays BOIT le PLUS ?TAOQAN · made private · 5 October 2026
  2. FRANCE TRAVAIL : RÉVÉLATIONS SUR UNE AFFAIRE D'ÉTATBLAST, Le souffle de l'info · made private · 4 October 2026
  3. Video creator's analysis of the geographical and social origins of the radical leftLAPIN DU FUTUR · unavailable, no reason given · 3 October 2026
  4. ADIEU ET PARDONLAPIN DU FUTUR · made private · 3 October 2026

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

Latest transcripts28 min 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.

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