Description
The visualization for Youtube shows the main keywords used in the videos made by the vloggers selected together with their time distribution. For each vlogger the main words used (as a total on all the videos posted) are shown with a detail on their distribution over time, as this is a variable that differ a lot for every blogger we analysed. All of them have many points in common due to the experience their going through as, despite the difference there might be in the opioid used or other problems going on in their life, the struggle in coming out of the circle is - or was - the same for everyone. What we noticed is a similar use in words related to thematic spheres that could be summed up as feelings, actions and slang terms.
Once established the key words for our research (opioid withdrawal, opioid addiction, opioid treatment, opioid abuse, opioid dependence, opioid pathway, opioid recovery, opioid rehab, opioid sober, painkiller) we used Youtube Data Tools to collect the videos related to those key words. We collected them based on their view count, as it would ensure us the most watched vlogs by people, as much as we used the popularity filter to collect our tv series. After collecting the first 100 videos for each keyword, we selected only those that were under the ‘People&Blog’ category. Once selected the first 5 rated with the highest views, we had to make sure the videos were actually made by people, so we went through all of them manually. The next step was to download all the transcripts and to put them into a tool that could give as a word-analysis. We used ‘Tag Cloud Generator’ that gave us the number of most used words. Among them, we deleted the stop words, keeping those that could display in a more specific way the changes occurring in the videos. After that, we cleaned the results and converted them in Excel with Atom.
As the aim is to explore the perception of the opioid crisis in the U.S. pop culture, apart from analysing social medias (Instagram) and TV series, we wanted to see how the actual protagonists of the opioid epidemic express their struggle within themselves, their everyday life and their way out of their addiction. We explored different possibilities, looking for different forums among which stand Reddit and Tumblr. But as we are focusing on the imaginary of the crisis and the way people perceive it, communicate it, and share it, we decided to focus on them and their voices, and that’s way we turned to Youtube. As far as we were able to see, it seems like vlogs are for addicted and recovering people a significant and useful way to express their feelings, sharing their path and trying with their testimony to help other people in need.
Protocol
Data
Data Source: DensityDesign
Timestamp: November 2018
View Data (500Kb)
These folder contains eleven dataset about the research on google queries: in each dataset there are information about the first fifty results of research on : prescription opioid in general, generic opioid name (fentanyl, hydrocodone,oxycodone,morphine,oxymorphone) and respectively their brand name.