Exploring YouTube’s Role in Shaping Political Discourse: A Case Study of the 2024 Tokyo Gubernatorial Election

This study examines YouTube's role in shaping political discourse during the 2024 Tokyo Gubernatorial Election, focusing on how candidates, related actors, and voters used the platform. The methodological approach includes descriptive statistics and text mining of keyword searching results, and network analysis of comments on the videos, supported by data from the YouTube Data API, along with comparisons to prime-time TV news coverage. Key findings include: (1) the volume and diversity of election-related content on YouTube, (2) three major types of content creators apart from candidates’ channels: TV broadcasters, influential individuals or organizations, and anonymous channels, (3) the significant presence of influential figures, and (4) the segmentation of audiences by candidate. The study concludes that YouTube played a unique role in political communication, offering diverse content beyond traditional media. However, it also highlighted risks of entertainment-focused short content and unverified information, showing both the opportunities and challenges of social media as a political tool.