Dissemination of obesity-related short videos on TikTok: content analysis

This study aims to investigate the dissemination of obesity-related videos and the concept of “obesity is a chronic disease” on TikTok. Videos with the hashtags “obesity”, “weight-loss” or those mentioning them in audio or subtitles were searched on TikTok and finally included to determine whether obesity was portrayed as predetermined frames. 121 videos were included: 79 (65.3%) were published by physicians, 1 (0.8%) by hospitals, 3 (2.5%) by commercial weight-loss agencies, 31 (25.6%) by the general public, and 7 (5.8%) by others. Only 8 (6.6%) videos mentioned “obesity is a chronic disease” in the label frame, of which 6 videos were published by physicians, 1 by the general public, and 1 by a commercial weight loss agency. Included videos covered predetermined frames to varying degrees; the causes were the most mentioned (38.8%), followed by symptoms (32.2%), treatment (29.8%), obesity associated diseases (25.6%), diagnosis (17.4%), prevention (15.7%), and risk factors (9.9%). The included 121 videos have received 12,292,146 likes, 2,887,336 shares, and 837,814 comments since they were uploaded. The content of short videos regarding obesity on TikTok was fragmented, and the concept of “obesity as a chronic disease” has not been well disseminated.