  The growing political polarization of the American electorate over the last
several decades has been widely studied and documented. During the
administration of President Donald Trump, charges of "fake news" made social
and news media not only the means but, to an unprecedented extent, the topic of
political communication. Using data from before the November 3rd, 2020 US
Presidential election, recent work has demonstrated the viability of using
YouTube's social media ecosystem to obtain insights into the extent of US
political polarization as well as the relationship between this polarization
and the nature of the content and commentary provided by different US news
networks. With that work as background, this paper looks at the sharp
transformation of the relationship between news consumers and here-to-fore
"fringe" news media channels in the 64 days between the US presidential
election and the violence that took place at US Capitol on January 6th. This
paper makes two distinct types of contributions. The first is to introduce a
novel methodology to analyze large social media data to study the dynamics of
social political news networks and their viewers. The second is to provide
insights into what actually happened regarding US political social media
channels and their viewerships during this volatile 64 day period.
