YouTube and COVID-19 vaccines: A mini scoping review.

YouTube is a highly popular social media platform capable of widespread information dissemination about COVID-19 vaccines. The aim of this mini scoping review was to summarize the content, quality, and methodology of studies that analyze YouTube videos related to COVID-19 vaccines. COVIDENCE was used to screen search results based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. PRISMA was used for data organization, and the final list of 9 articles used in the mini review were summarized and synthesized. YouTube videos included in each study, total number of cumulative views, results, and limitations were described. Overall, most of the videos were uploaded by television and internet news media and healthcare professionals. A variety of coding schemas were used in the studies. Videos with misleading, inaccurate, or anti-vaccination sentiment were more often uploaded by consumers. Officials seeking to encourage vaccination may utilize YouTube for widespread reach and to debunk misinformation and disinformation.

"Thought I'd Share First" and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the COVID-19 Infodemic: Exploratory Study.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak has left many people isolated within their homes; these people are turning to social media for news and social connection, which leaves them vulnerable to believing and sharing misinformation. Health-related misinformation threatens adherence to public health messaging, and monitoring its spread on social media is critical to understanding the evolution of ideas that have potentially negative public health impacts. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to use Twitter data to explore methods to characterize and classify four COVID-19 conspiracy theories and to provide context for each of these conspiracy theories through the first 5 months of the pandemic. METHODS: We began with a corpus of COVID-19 tweets (approximately 120 million) spanning late January to early May 2020. We first filtered tweets using regular expressions (n=1.8 million) and used random forest classification models to identify tweets related to four conspiracy theories. Our classified data sets were then used in downstream sentiment analysis and dynamic topic modeling to characterize the linguistic features of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as they evolve over time. RESULTS: Analysis using model-labeled data was beneficial for increasing the proportion of data matching misinformation indicators. Random forest classifier metrics varied across the four conspiracy theories considered (F1 scores between 0.347 and 0.857); this performance increased as the given conspiracy theory was more narrowly defined. We showed that misinformation tweets demonstrate more negative sentiment when compared to nonmisinformation tweets and that theories evolve over time, incorporating details from unrelated conspiracy theories as well as real-world events. CONCLUSIONS: Although we focus here on health-related misinformation, this combination of approaches is not specific to public health and is valuable for characterizing misinformation in general, which is an important first step in creating targeted messaging to counteract its spread. Initial messaging should aim to preempt generalized misinformation before it becomes widespread, while later messaging will need to target evolving conspiracy theories and the new facets of each as they become incorporated.

Dr Fauci and the Art of Science Communication.

Anthony Fauci, MD, who announced he will step down as chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden and as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discusses best practices for conveying scientific information to the public in a polarized era.

Dramatically increased accessibility and decreased cost-per-person impacts are needed for scaling IPM in Africa.

While traditional scaling for integrated pest management (IPM) in Africa requires the movement of expert trainers from village to village, these efforts are often costly, time-inefficient, hampered by distance, and became impossible under COVID-19's movement restrictions (despite tremendously increased public need for IPM-scaling knowledge). One solution to this dilemma is IPM-scaling, usable by a diversity of development actors expending limited or few resources, to deliver critical information to large numbers of people with systems-approach information and communication technologies. This paper describes one such systems-approach scaling platform, Scientific Animations Without Borders, which effectively elicited end-user solution-adoption and decreased unit costs over increasing scales in three African countries during COVID-19. How to scale game-changing IPM insights 'off the shelf' and 'into people's hands in the field' is also discussed.

Quality of Internet Videos Related to Pediatric Urology in Mainland China: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Pediatric urological diseases pose serious threats to children's physical and mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in poor pediatric outcomes for cryptorchidism, hypospadias, and testicular torsion. Presently, many people tend to seek health information via social media platforms. This study aims to quantitatively assess the quality of videos as an information source for pediatric urology in mainland China. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a search was performed on social media platforms (Tiktok, Bilibili, and Weibo) with the search terms "cryptorchidism", "hypospadias", and "testicular torsion". The first 30 results with any search term listed by relevance were selected in each platform. Video features (duration, number of likes, comments, and shares) and video sources were collected. Each video included in the study was assessed using DISCERN, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Benchmark Criteria, and Hexagonal Radar Schema. A correlation analysis was performed considering video features, video source, DISCERN scores and JAMA scores. Results: A total of 152 videos were included and analyzed. The majority of videos were from physicians (65.8%). According to the DISCERN classification, most videos were rated as "very poor" (48.0%) and "poor" (36.8%). The mean DISCERN and JAMA scores were 36.56 and 2.68, respectively. The duration of videos uploaded by physicians was the shortest (P < 0.001). The video source had no relevance to numbers of "likes", "comments", "shares", DISCERN scores, and JAMA scores (all P-values > 0.05). Other than video duration (P < 0.001), there was no statistically significant difference between groups for any of the recorded or calculated video data (all P values > 0.05). Hexagonal Radar Charts showed the severe imbalance and deficiency of video information. In general, Tiktok videos with the shortest duration received the most numbers of "likes", "comments", and "shares", whereas the overall quality of videos on Weibo was relatively high. Conclusions: Despite most of the videos on social media platforms being uploaded by medical authors, the overall quality was poor. The misleading, inaccurate and incomplete information may pose a health risk to the viewers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much effort needs to be undertaken to improve the quality of health-related videos regarding pediatric urology.

Assessment of the educational value of endodontic access cavity preparation YouTube video as a learning resource for students.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the educational value of YouTube as a learning tool for dental students regarding endodontic access cavity preparation. METHODS AND FINDINGS: YouTube search was made for videos related to endodontic access cavity preparation using specific terms. After exclusions, 41 videos were chosen and assessed for tooth type, video length, days since upload, country of origin, number of views and likes, source of authorship, and viewing rate. To grade the content of videos, a usefulness score with seven elements was developed. Each element was given a score of 0 or 1. Statistical tests were run by using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA) at a 5% significance level. The videos received a mean of 181198.5 views with a mean duration of 686.1 seconds. The mean number of "likes" was 1047.8. Almost half of the videos covered content related to molar teeth. Most videos were provided by health care professionals with almost 50% uploaded from India. The mean usefulness score was 4.29 (range: 1-7) and the most discussed elements were description, instruments used, access cavity demonstration, and evaluation criteria. About a quarter of the videos were classified as good, while 46.3% as moderate and 29.3% as poor. Among the content usefulness categories, no difference was found in the video demographics (p>0.05) except "days since upload" (p = 0.018) in which good quality videos were found to have the highest median. Moreover, although insignificant, good videos were found to have the longest duration and lowest number of views, likes, and viewing rate. The mean usefulness score of videos released during the COVID-19 pandemic was lower than that for pre-pandemic videos (p = 0.042), and videos uploaded by academic institutions had a higher mean usefulness score than videos uploaded by health care professionals (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Information on endodontic access cavity preparation is not comprehensive in most of the reviewed YouTube videos and could be of low educational value.

Social Media for the Dissemination of Educational Videos About Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

INTRODUCTION: To broadly disseminate 5 user-centered educational videos for patients with inflammatory bowel disease and their family and friends on social media. METHODS: Relevant social media users were iteratively identified based on their online behavior. For each video, 2 different accompanying texts were tested. RESULTS: We reached 4.2 million social media users of whom 320,302 watched at least 50% of the video. A short description resulted in higher view rates than posing an open-ended question. DISCUSSION: We showed the feasibility of large-scale dissemination of health-related educational videos through social media. Our findings can inform future online dissemination approaches of educational content.

Quality Assessment of YouTube Videos as an Information Source for Testicular Torsion.

Background: Testicular torsion is an acute scrotal disease requiring urgent management, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been demonstrated to lead to poor outcomes for this disease. Presently, many people tend to seek health information via YouTube. This study aims to quantitatively assess the quality of English YouTube video content as an information source of testicular torsion. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a search was performed with the search term "testicular torsion" on YouTube, and the first 100 videos listed by relevance were selected for our analysis. Duplicate, non-English, videos without audio and surgical videos were excluded. Video features (duration, number of days online, views, likes, comments), source of the video, and author's country were collected. Each video included in the study was assessed using DISCERN and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Benchmark Criteria. A correlation analysis was performed considering video features, video source, DISCERN scores and JAMA scores. Results: A total of 66 videos were included and analyzed. The most common video content was general information, including etiology, symptoms, and treatment. The majority of videos were from education and training websites (30%), physicians (23%), and independent users (21%). The mean DISCERN and JAMA scores were 36.56 and 2.68, respectively. According to DISCERN, the quality of video uploaded by physicians was relatively high (P < 0.001), and the quality of video uploaded by independent users was relatively low (P < 0.001). The JAMA score had no relevance to the video source (P = 0.813). The correlation between the video features, DISCERN and JAMA scores was controversial by different assessment methods. Conclusions: Despite most of the videos on YouTube being uploaded by medical or education-related authors, the overall quality was poor. The misleading, inaccurate and incomplete information may pose a health risk to the viewers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much effort needs to be undertaken to improve the quality of health-related videos regarding testicular torsion.

Review of the Quality of YouTube Videos Recommending Exercises for the COVID-19 Lockdown.

BACKGROUND: The world is experiencing a pandemic caused by COVID-19. Insufficient physical activity can increase the risk of illness. Trying to replicate a normal search that any user/patient could do in YouTube, the objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of YouTube videos related to home exercises during lockdown and their adherence to World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. METHODS: A simple search was carried out on YouTube. The first 150 videos were selected. After applying exclusion criteria, 68 videos were analyzed and evaluated. Two statistical analyses based on machine learning techniques were carried out. Videos were classified according to principal component analysis (PCA) models as 'Relevant' and 'Non-Relevant'. Popularity was assessed using the video power index (VPI). Information's quality and accuracy were gauged using the DISCERN scale and global quality score (GQS). Reliability and credibility of information that can be found on health-related websites was assessed using the Health On the Net Code (HONCode). Exercises were evaluated according to WHO recommendations. RESULTS: DISCERN, HONCode, and GQS scored a mean of 2.29, 58.95, and 2.32, respectively. The PCA calculation allowed videos to auto-classify into high- and low-quality videos. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of YouTube videos recommending exercises during lockdown is low and doesn't reflect WHO recommendations. Effective strategies and tools capable of indicating the quality of this information are needed to filter out erroneous or non-rigorous information that may affect people's health. These tools should help any user/viewer to distinguish videos of high and low quality.

How Vaccination Rumours Spread Online: Tracing the Dissemination of Information Regarding Adverse Events of COVID-19 Vaccines.

Objectives: To trace the emergence and dissemination of the most prominent rumours about potential adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: We use a weekly Google Trends search to gather information about what alleged adverse events are being associated with COVID vaccines by the general population. We then use CrowdTangle and Factiva searches to examine how discussions about the five most prominent adverse events have spread through traditional media channels and Facebook. Results: Traditional mass media reporting remains crucial in both promoting and moderating discussions around alleged adverse events. While some cases illustrate that social media networks can synthesise and amplify rumours about adverse events, traditional media coverage remains crucial as a forum for exploring and debunking spurious claims. Conclusion: Traditional media stories still bear signficant responsibility as credibility markers for rumours about vaccine adverse events. Journalists should therefore be encouraged to be particularly earnest when reporting such stories, and the scientific community should aid journalists in this task by clearly responding to any rumours emerging online.

AP-HP Health Data Space (AHDS) to the Test of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Sharing observational and interventional health data within a common data space enables university hospitals to leverage such data for biomedical discovery and moving towards a learning health system. OBJECTIVE: To describe the AP-HP Health Data Space (AHDS) and the IT services supporting piloting, research, innovation and patient care. METHODS: Built on three pillars - governance and ethics, technology and valorization - the AHDS and its major component, the Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) have been developed since 2015. RESULTS: The AP-HP CDW has been made available at scale to AP-HP both healthcare professionals and public or private partners in January 2017. Supported by an institutional secured and high-performance cloud and an ecosystem of tools, mostly open source, the AHDS integrates a large amount of massive healthcare data collected during care and research activities. As of December 2021, the AHDS operates the electronic data capture for almost +840 clinical trials sponsored by AP-HP, the CDW is enabling the processing of health data from more than 11 million patients and generated +200 secondary data marts from IRB authorized research projects. During the Covid-19 pandemic, AHDS has had to evolve quickly to support administrative professionals and caregivers heavily involved in the reorganization of both patient care and biomedical research. CONCLUSION: The AP-HP Data Space is a key facilitator for data-driven evidence generation and making the health system more efficient and personalized.

Paradigm shift: Beyond the COVID-19 era, is YouTube the future of education for CABG patients?

INTRODUCTION: Patients commonly use YouTube for education, and this may have increased due to COVID-19 related restrictions on access to healthcare professionals. However, YouTube videos lack peer review and regulation. To assess patient education in the COVID-19 era, we analyzed the quality of YouTube videos on coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. METHODS: We searched YouTube using the phrase "coronary artery bypass graft." Two authors individually used the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), DISCERN, and Health on the Net (HON) systems, to rate the first 50 videos retrieved. Data collected for each video included; number of views, duration since upload, percentage positivity (proportion of likes relative to total likes plus dislikes), number of comments, and video author. Interobserver reliability was assessed using an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Associations between video characteristics and quality were tested using linear regression or t-tests. RESULTS: The average number of views was 575,571. Average quality was poor, with mean scores of 1.93/4 (ICC 0.54) for JAMA criteria, 2.52/5 (ICC 0.78) for DISCERN criteria, and 4.04/8 (ICC 0.66) for HON criteria. Videos uploaded by surgeons scored highest overall (p < .05). No other factors demonstrated significant association with video quality. CONCLUSION: YouTube videos on CABG surgery are of poor quality and may be inadequate for patient education. Given the complexity of the procedure and that beyond the COVID-19 era, patients are more likely to seek education from digital sources, treating surgeons should advise of YouTube's limitations and direct patients to reliable sources of information.

Analysis of YouTube videos as a source of information for myocarditis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aimed to examine the content, reliability, and quality of YouTube video contents concerning myocarditis and its association with the COVID-19 for the first time in the literature. METHODS: The most viewed 50 videos were included in the analysis. The time since the videos were uploaded, video length, type of image (real/animation), video content, qualify of the uploaders, the number of daily and total views, likes, dislikes, comments and VPI were recorded. The reliability of the videos was determined using the modified DISCERN criteria for consumer health information, while the quality was determined with the GQS. RESULTS: The mean length of the videos was found as 6.25 ± 5.20 min. Contents of the videos included general information, COVID-19, vaccination, diagnosis, patient experience and treatment. The most common contents were regarding COVID-19 and vaccination by 44%. The uploaders of the videos were classified as physicians, hospital channels, health channels, patients and others. Fourteen (28%) videos were directly uploaded by physicians. The most viewed, liked and disliked videos were uploaded by health channels. The mean VPI score was calculated as 92.89 ± 12.29. The mean DISCERN score of all videos was 3.88 ± 0.77 and the mean GQS score was 3.63 ± 0.85. Reliability and quality of the videos were moderate. CONCLUSION: YouTube videos on myocarditis have mostly focused on the associations between myocarditis and COVID-19 disease and vaccination. Health-related contents on YouTube should be subjected to peer review and quality assessment.

Learning to think critically about health using digital technology in Ugandan lower secondary schools: A contextual analysis.

INTRODUCTION: The world is awash with claims about the effects of health interventions. Many of these claims are untrustworthy because the bases are unreliable. Acting on unreliable claims can lead to waste of resources and poor health outcomes. Yet, most people lack the necessary skills to appraise the reliability of health claims. The Informed Health Choices (IHC) project aims to equip young people in Ugandan lower secondary schools with skills to think critically about health claims and to make good health choices by developing and evaluating digital learning resources. To ensure that we create resources that are suitable for use in Uganda's secondary schools and can be scaled up if found effective, we conducted a context analysis. We aimed to better understand opportunities and barriers related to demand for the resources, how the learning content overlaps with existing curriculum and conditions in secondary schools for accessing and using digital resources, in order to inform resource development. METHODS: We used a mixed methods approach and collected both qualitative and quantitative data. We conducted document analyses, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, school visits, and a telephone survey regarding information communication and technology (ICT). We used a nominal group technique to obtain consensus on the appropriate number and length of IHC lessons that should be planned in a school term. We developed and used a framework from the objectives to code the transcripts and generated summaries of query reports in Atlas.ti version 7. FINDINGS: Critical thinking is a key competency in the lower secondary school curriculum. However, the curriculum does not explicitly make provision to teach critical thinking about health, despite a need acknowledged by curriculum developers, teachers and students. Exam oriented teaching and a lack of learning resources are additional important barriers to teaching critical thinking about health. School closures and the subsequent introduction of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated teachers' use of digital equipment and learning resources for teaching. Although the government is committed to improving access to ICT in schools and teachers are open to using ICT, access to digital equipment, unreliable power and internet connections remain important hinderances to use of digital learning resources. CONCLUSIONS: There is a recognized need for learning resources to teach critical thinking about health in Ugandan lower secondary schools. Digital learning resources should be designed to be usable even in schools with limited access and equipment. Teacher training on use of ICT for teaching is needed.

Government Information Dissemination During Public Health Emergencies: An Analysis of China's Experiences.

Information disclosure is crucial in China's official response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the early phase of the pandemic, the government's method of communication has relied heavily upon its analysis of information disclosed during past public health emergencies. This approach was proposed to better inform and prepare citizens during the crisis. This study aimed to study the effectiveness of China's information disclosure by examining themes, interconnection, and timeliness of information as posted on the Weibo microblogging platform between January and April 2020. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model analysis for social networks revealed six main characteristics including a shift from 'scattered' to 'focused' communication. Three main themes surrounding experience were highlighted, namely social governance, medical expertise, and encouragement, although experiential knowledge disclosure was timelier than other topics. This study broadens the dimension and scope of empirical theory by examining government information disclosure practices and provides a reference for further research.

Understanding the Barriers and Facilitators to Sharing Patient-Generated Health Data Using Digital Technology for People Living With Long-Term Health Conditions: A Narrative Review.

Using digital technology to share patient-generated health data has the potential to improve the self-management of multiple long-term health conditions. Sharing these data can allow patients to receive additional support from healthcare professionals and peer communities, as well as enhance their understanding of their own health. A deeper understanding of the concerns raised by those living with long-term health conditions when considering whether to share health data via digital technology may help to facilitate effective data sharing practices in the future. The aim of this review is to identify whether trust, identity, privacy and security concerns present barriers to the successful sharing of patient-generated data using digital technology by those living with long-term health conditions. We also address the impact of stigma on concerns surrounding sharing health data with others. Searches of CINAHL, PsychInfo and Web of Knowledge were conducted in December 2019 and again in October 2020 producing 2,581 results. An iterative review process resulted in a final dataset of 23 peer-reviewed articles. A thorough analysis of the selected articles found that issues surrounding trust, identity, privacy and security clearly present barriers to the sharing of patient-generated data across multiple sharing contexts. The presence of enacted stigma also acts as a barrier to sharing across multiple settings. We found that the majority of literature focuses on clinical settings with relatively little attention being given to sharing with third parties. Finally, we suggest the need for more solution-based research to overcome the discussed barriers to sharing.

YouTube as a source of misinformation on COVID-19 vaccination: a systematic analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have been accessible to the public since December 2020. However, only 58.3% of Americans are fully vaccinated as of 5 November 2021. Numerous studies have supported YouTube as a source of both reliable and misleading information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Misinformation regarding the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines has negatively impacted vaccination intent. To date, the literature lacks a systematic evaluation of YouTube's content on COVID-19 vaccination using validated scoring tools. The objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy, usability and quality of the most widely viewed YouTube videos on COVID-19 vaccination. METHODS: A search on YouTube was performed on 21 July 2021, using keywords 'COVID-19 vaccine' on a cleared-cache web browser. Search results were sorted by 'views', and the top 150 most-viewed videos were collected and analysed. Duplicate, non-English, non-audiovisual, exceeding 1-hour duration, or videos unrelated to COVID-19 vaccine were excluded. The primary outcome was usability and reliability of videos, analysed using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) score, the modified Journal of the American Medical Association (mJAMA) score and the COVID-19 Vaccine Score (CVS). RESULTS: CONCLUSION: As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, widespread adoption of vaccination is essential in reducing morbidity, mortality, and returning to some semblance of normalcy. Providing high-quality and engaging health information from reputable sources is essential in addressing vaccine hesitancy.