YouTube as a source of patient information for Covid‐19: An enhanced content‐quality and audience engagement analysis

Dear Editor, As 5th year medical students, we found the article ‘YouTube as a source of patient information for Covid‐19: A content‐quality and audience engagement analysis’ to be of great interest. Whilst it is vital to consider the quality of information the population is viewing; we had some concerns regarding the method of this study. This article states that the YouTube videos were found by searching specific items and selecting the first 30 that appeared when filtered by relevancy. Whilst relevancy is a valuable parameter, it may not include videos related to the search terms that had the largest reach regarding audience size. By sorting results using the view count filter, it would allow the study to examine videos with a potentially more significant impact on public education. The DISCERN tool was used to assess the content quality of the videos. Whilst this tool evaluates many criteria, it fails to consider transparency and reliability. Although the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark criteria were designed for websites, the four criteria: authorship, attribution, disclosure and currency could still be assessed in the YouTube videos. Inclusion of this system alongside DISCERN would allow for an enhanced analysis. Finally, this study also assessed audience engagement using the video power index (VPI). Though this uses many variables including likes, views and days since upload, it does not acknowledge that many viewers will stop watching the video prior to its finish. By contacting the YouTube channels responsible for these videos, key metrics such as ‘watch time’, watch duration and watch percentage could be ascertained. Substituting these values into the formulae proposed by Siqi Wu et al. in 2018, a score of relative engagement could be calculated. We believe this score would hold much more significance than the VPI in isolation. In conclusion, the study gave insight into the quality of information that the public can find through YouTube but changing the methodology would yield more meaningful results. By filtering the search by view count, using the JAMA benchmark criteria for assessing video quality and calculating a relative engagement score for audience engagement, this study could be greatly improved. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS Each author submitted equal contribution to the combined piece, in both analysis of the original document and writing this response. All authors have revised this piece and read the final version prior to approval. All authors accept full accountability for the produced document. Benyamin Alam: critiqued article, wrote draft of paragraph 4 regarding audience engagement assessment, involved in proofing and revising final product Wajahat Mughal: critiqued article, wrote draft of paragraph 3 regarding assessment criteria, involved in proofing and revising final product Zahid Mohammed: critiqued article, wrote draft of paragraph 2 regarding search criteria, involved in proofing and revising final product Abdullah Zafar: critiqued article, wrote draft of paragraphs 1 and 5 the introduction and conclusion, formalised referencing, involved in proofing and revising final product.