Public Opinions and Concerns Regarding the Canadian Prime Minister's Daily COVID-19 Briefing: Longitudinal Study of YouTube Comments Using Machine Learning Techniques.
J Med Internet Res
; 23(2): e23957, 2021 02 23.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1576022
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided updates on the novel coronavirus and the government's responses to the pandemic in his daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020, delivered on the official Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) YouTube channel.OBJECTIVE:
The aim of this study was to examine comments on Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's COVID-19 daily briefings by YouTube users and track these comments to extract the changing dynamics of the opinions and concerns of the public over time.METHODS:
We used machine learning techniques to longitudinally analyze a total of 46,732 English YouTube comments that were retrieved from 57 videos of Prime Minister Trudeau's COVID-19 daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020. A natural language processing model, latent Dirichlet allocation, was used to choose salient topics among the sampled comments for each of the 57 videos. Thematic analysis was used to classify and summarize these salient topics into different prominent themes.RESULTS:
We found 11 prominent themes, including strict border measures, public responses to Prime Minister Trudeau's policies, essential work and frontline workers, individuals' financial challenges, rental and mortgage subsidies, quarantine, government financial aid for enterprises and individuals, personal protective equipment, Canada and China's relationship, vaccines, and reopening.CONCLUSIONS:
This study is the first to longitudinally investigate public discourse and concerns related to Prime Minister Trudeau's daily COVID-19 briefings in Canada. This study contributes to establishing a real-time feedback loop between the public and public health officials on social media. Hearing and reacting to real concerns from the public can enhance trust between the government and the public to prepare for future health emergencies.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Public Opinion
/
Natural Language Processing
/
Public Health
/
Federal Government
/
Social Media
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Vaccines
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
J Med Internet Res
Journal subject:
Medical Informatics
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
23957
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