Blog

A new interesting article has been published in Travel Med Infect Dis. 2020 Mar 20:101636. doi: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101636. [Epub ahead of print] and titled:

YouTube as source of information on 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak: A cross sectional study of English and Mandarin content.

Authors of this article are:

Khatri P, Singh S, Belani NK, Leng YY, Lohan R, Wei LY, Teo WZ.

A summary of the article is shown below:

BACKGROUND: The current 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is rapidly evolving. YouTube has been recognized as a popular source of information in previous disease outbreaks. We analyzed the content on YouTube about n-CoV in English and Mandarin languages.METHODS: YouTube was searched using the terms ‘2019 novel coronavirus’, ‘Wuhan virus’ and ” (Mandarin for Wuhan virus) on 1st and 2nd February 2020. First 50 videos in each group were analyzed. Videos in other languages, duplicate videos, those without an audio and duration >15 min were excluded .72 videos in English and 42 in Mandarin were reviewed. 2 reviewers classified the videos as useful, misleading or news based on pre specified criterion. Inter-observer agreement was evaluated with kappa coefficient. Modified DISCERN index for reliability and medical information and content index (MICI) score were used for content analysis.RESULTS: These videos attracted cumulative 21,288,856 views. 67% of English and 50% Mandarin videos had useful information. The viewership of misleading Mandarin videos was higher than the useful ones. WHO accounted for only 4% of useful videos. Mean DISCERN score for reliability was 3.12/5 and 3.25/5 for English and Mandarin videos respectively. Mean cumulative MICI score of useful videos was low (6.71/25 for English and 6.28/25 for Mandarin).CONCLUSIONS: YouTube viewership during 2019 n-CoV outbreak is higher than previous outbreaks. The medical content of videos is suboptimal International health agencies are underrepresented. Given its popularity, YouTube should be considered as important platform for information dissemination.Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:

[link-preview url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32205267 forceshot=true]

This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: 2019 novel corona virus; Disease outbreak; Internet; Wuhan virus; YouTube.

---

New Research Kits from MOLECULAR DEPOT

---

New Antibodies from MOLECULAR DEPOT

---

New Proteins from MOLECULAR DEPOT

---

New Chemicals from MOLECULAR DEPOT