Is social media promoting covid-19 vaccine uptake? A case of hausa language youtube videos

ABSTRACT

The importance of social media in spreading health information, COVID-19 inclusive cannot be over emphasized and YouTube as one of the social media platforms is the most popular video-sharing platform widely. Studies in other languages showed that, videos on YouTube spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine. Objective: To assess the nature of information in Hausa language YouTube videos on COVID-19 vaccine uptake.Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study of Hausa language YouTube videos on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. A filtered search was conducted on YouTube on 19th September, 2021 using the Hausa words for Coronavirus Vaccine as search terms. The words used were "Allurar Rigakafin Coronavirus" and "Rigakafin coronavirus". Fifty-five videos were included, YouTube video information were collected and video source and video metrics categorization were also collected. The videos were assessed to determine if they were pro-vaccination and for content, by extracting data based on information on COVID-19 vaccination contained in the videos using a predesigned proforma. Data analysis was done using Microsoft Excel 2016 and SPSS version 20. Results: About 65% of the videos had views of 0-100 with no dislike and were uploaded in the last 6 months. Only about onethird (36.4%) of the videos were pro-vaccination. Factual information on COVID-19 vaccine and information on vaccine safety, efficacy, side effects and dangers of vaccine rejection were contained in 36.4% or less of the videos. Outright misinformation was contained in as much as 25.5% of the videos. Conclusion: Most of the Hausa language YouTube videos on COVID-19 vaccine uptake were not pro-vaccination, they were not sufficiently informative on COVID-19 and some contained misinformation. Such videos with questionable content should be deleted from YouTube to forestall misleading the populace