Empirical analysis of the judgment of unconditional basic income through YouTube comments

Abstract

One of the world’s largest video-sharing platforms is YouTube, where viewers can comment onthe videos and their topics. The aim of this study is to examine the values and opinions aboutunconditional basic income according to the comment sections of several Youtube’s videos whichtopic is the previously mentioned UBI which is receiving increasing attention in parallel withtoday’s economic and social changes. Our research works with a mixed method, data collection,storage, sentiment analysis and the bag of words method which were implemented using ITprocedures, while categorization was done through manual coding. The results of the sentimentanalysis show that positive arguments appear to a lesser extent in the comments. Positivearguments have value characteristics such as inclusion, the principle of the right to exist, justiceand freedom. Among the positive arguments feasibility enjoys the highest support. Negativecategory values arise more frequently, so the emphasis on the values of injustice, exclusion,unaffordability, and performance-orientation is dominant in the analyzed comments.