Evaluating reliability of COVID-19 information on youtube: an Indian case study

Social media platforms have become popular among users seeking online health information. YouTube, the world’s second most popular search engine, was widely used to disseminate health information associated with COVID-19 (Basch in JMIR Public Health Surveill 6: e18807, 2020). It is the most preferred social media platform (53 per cent) for news consumption in India, as per the Digital News Report 2022. This study investigates different sources and types of COVID-19 content available on YouTube and evaluates the reliability of these videos. The study examines the COVID-19 information network on YouTube through the lens of social capital theory. It seeks to identify how various sources, including governments, media, health organizations, and independent content creators, shared different types of pandemic related information on YouTube. The study includes 409 unique videos published over two years, from January 2020 to December 2021. The reliability of the COVID-19 YouTube videos is evaluated using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) scale adapted from the DISCERN scale (Charnock in J Epidemiol Commun Health 53:105–111, 1999). Findings reveal that private media organizations dominated COVID-19 content on YouTube, whereas government and public agencies and health organizations lacked visibility on the platform. Despite the plethora of COVID-19 related information uploaded by various sources, the mDISCERN score (26.30 ± 4.58) indicates that COVID-19 information on YouTube is of moderate quality. Merely 2.9 per cent of all videos are of excellent quality. The videos also lack focus on behavioural change communication during the pandemic, where only 41 per cent of the videos discuss prevention strategies of social distancing, masking, washing hands, or getting vaccinated.