Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Mar 19, 2020
Date Accepted: Mar 31, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Educating the Public About Reducing Exposure to SARS-CoV-2: Preventive Behaviors Conveyed on YouTube to Mitigate Transmission of COVID-19
ABSTRACT
Background:
Accurate information and guidance about personal behavior to reduce exposure to SARS-CoV-2 is one of the most important elements in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. With over 2+ billion users, YouTube is media channel that millions turn to seeking information.
Objective:
There are currently no published studies investigating the content of YouTube videos related to COVID-19. This study aimed to address this gap in the current knowledge.
Methods:
This study reviews the 100 most widely viewed YouTube videos uploaded throughout the month of January 2020 to describe content covered.
Results:
Collectively, these videos were viewed over 125 million times. Fewer than one-third of the videos covered any of the six key prevention behaviors listed on the CDC website.
Conclusions:
This represents an important missed opportunity for disease prevention.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.