Analysis of YouTube Videos on Pregnant COVID-19 Patients During the Pandemic Period

Abstract

Objective: Pregnant women often refer to YouTube videos when they are worried about themselves and/or their baby. This study aims to evaluate COVID-19 and pregnancy-related content on YouTube, the platform that comes to mind first when social media is mentioned.

Methods: YouTube videos were evaluated between September 7-10, 2022. "COVID-19 pregnancy" videos with more than 100.000 views were included in the study. The content and technical data of 45 videos were recorded. The videos were scored using the DISCERN score, Video Power Index (VPI), and Global Quality Scale (GQS).

Results: Of the 45 videos with a mean duration of 432 seconds, 32 (71.1%) of them originated in the USA, 38 (84.4%) of them were presented by healthcare workers, and 36 (80.0%) of them recommended vaccination. Accounts producing the videos had a mean of 3,037,619 subscribers. The videos we analyzed were viewed a mean of 522836 times. These videos had 9287 likes and 1891 comments. The DISCERN, VPI, and GQS mean scores of the videos were 32.36, 74.76, and 3.82, respectively.

Conclusion: In order to correctly inform society about health problems, healthcare workers must make presentations on YouTube with a controlled mechanism. There is confusion about information on the internet, and people must acquire information selectively.

Keywords: coronavirus; covid-19 retro; pandemic; pregnancy; sars-cov-2; youtube.