1. Misleading Health-Related Information Promoted Through Video-Based Social Media: Anorexia on YouTube
- Author
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Syed-Abdul, Shabbir, Fernandez-Luque, Luis, Jian, Wen-Shan, Li, Yu-Chuan, Crain, Steven, Hsu, Min-Huei, Wang, Yao-Chin, Khandregzen, Dorjsuren, Chuluunbaatar, Enkhzaya, Nguyen, Phung Anh, and Liou, Der-Ming
- Subjects
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics ,R858-859.7 ,Public aspects of medicine ,RA1-1270 - Abstract
IntroductionThe amount of information being uploaded onto social video platforms, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Veoh, continues to spiral, making it increasingly difficult to discern reliable health information from misleading content. There are thousands of YouTube videos promoting misleading information about anorexia (eg, anorexia as a healthy lifestyle). ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate anorexia-related misinformation disseminated through YouTube videos. MethodsWe retrieved YouTube videos related to anorexia using the keywords anorexia, anorexia nervosa, proana, and thinspo on October 10, 2011.Three doctors reviewed 140 videos with approximately 11 hours of video content, classifying them as informative, pro-anorexia, or others. By informative we mean content describing the health consequences of anorexia and advice on how to recover from it; by pro-anorexia we mean videos promoting anorexia as a fashion, a source of beauty, and that share tips and methods for becoming and remaining anorexic. The 40 most-viewed videos (20 informative and 20 pro-anorexia videos) were assessed to gauge viewer behavior. ResultsThe interrater agreement of classification was moderate (Fleiss’ kappa=0.5), with 29.3% (n=41) being rated as pro-anorexia, 55.7% (n=78) as informative, and 15.0% (n=21) as others. Pro-anorexia videos were favored 3 times more than informative videos (odds ratio [OR] 3.3, 95% CI 3.3-3.4, P
- Published
- 2013
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