Chaos or Clarity: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Top Comments on Jordan Peterson's Controversial YouTube Videos

Abstract: This thesis endeavors to make sense of how Jordan Peterson, a highly controversial public figure—who is rapidly becoming academia’s equivalent to a rock star—is perceived by his online audience. To that end, the study adopts an analytical approach while integrating several theoretical frameworks, including the concept of echo chambers. It concentrates on Peterson’s two most viewed videos on YouTube, found on British GQ (@BritishGQ) and Channel 4 News (@Channel4News), examining the comments section for insights. Besides being the most popular entries with a combined total of over one hundred million views, these videos are also of particular interest since they both involve a one-on-one interview format with a host questioning Peterson about similar yet different topics. While Peterson has been the subject of various research in different disciplines, little attention has been paid to how his audience in social media generally perceives him as a public figure. The primary objective is to discover more about his online following by evaluating their comments, particularly those that receive the most likes and appear at the top. The data is intricate and encompasses various inquiries that call for clarification. The investigation employs corpus linguistics, computational methods, and sentiment analysis to gain deeper insight into the data. The analysis revealed that the majority of influential commenters expressed favorable opinions about the interviewee, with subjective language and direct quotes from the interview being prevalent. There were also distinct themes and echo chambers present, and comments with polarized sentiments tended to be more popular among viewers. In addition to discussing the technical aspects and limitations that must be considered when interpreting the findings, this study emphasizes the promise of social media and new media as powerful tools for effecting social change and promoting public discourse on various issues. The study concludes that employing various methods simultaneously to paint a comprehensive picture from a dataset seems exciting and that the choice of approach comes down to the research questions and the resources available. The paper calls for further research to determine the extent to which the findings can be applied to similar ventures and explore the implications of echo chambers on public perception and discourse.