YouTube as a source of information during the Covid-19 pandemic: a content analysis of YouTube videos published during January to March 2020

Background: Institutions, government departments, and healthcare professionals engage in social media because it facilitates reaching a large number of people simultaneously. YouTube provides a platform whereby anyone can upload videos and gain feedback on their content from other users. Many YouTube videos are related to health and science, and many people search YouTube for health-related information. YouTube has been acknowledged as a key public information source in recent crises caused by Zika, H1N1, swine flu, and most recently, COVID-19.

Methods: YouTube videos were collected from the YouTube Application Programming Interface (API) using the search terms COVID-19, coronavirus, COVID19, and corona. The search was conducted on April 4 and 5, 2020. The initial investigation found a total of 1084 videos. The second step involved identifying and verifying the videos for their relationship to COVID-19 information and excluding videos that did not relate to COVID-19 or were in a language other than English and Hindi.

Results: An analysis of YouTube videos covering COVID-19, uploaded in early 2020, in English and Hindi. The sample comprised 349 videos (n = 334 English). Videos were characterized by contributor, duration, content, and reception (views/likes/dislikes/comments). The majority contained general information, with only 4.01% focusing on symptoms and 11.17% on treatment and outcomes. Further, the majority (n = 229) were short videos of under 10 min duration. Videos provided by government and health care professionals comprised 6.87% and 5.74% % of the sample, respectively. News channels uploaded 71.63% of videos.

Conclusions: YouTube may provide a significant resource for disseminating of information on public health issues like outbreaks of viral infections and should be utilized by healthcare agencies for this purpose. However, there is currently no way to determine whether a video has been produced or verified by authorized healthcare professionals. This limitation needs to be addressed so that the vital distribution services offered by platforms like YouTube can be fully utilized for increasing public understanding of healthcare science, particularly during a crisis such as a pandemic.