YouTube and its role as a complementary information strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The emergence of COVID-19 and the associated pandemic outbreak demonstrated the need to educate and mobilize the public to adopt behaviors for community mitigation. In a context of rapid epidemiological worsening, the use of digital media to access information benefits the population and can contribute to the control of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the most viewed Brazilian videos on YouTube as a source of information about COVID-19. METHODS The quantitative, observational, and cross-sectional study was conducted on YouTube on 04/30/2020, with videos uploaded between 01/01/2020 and 04/ 30/2020. The descriptor “coronavirus” was used and the first 100 most viewed videos that were recorded in Brazilian Portuguese, related to the topic, unduplicated, and being less than 30 minutes long were selected. Two judges recorded the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the videos downloaded from YouTube for data analysis. RESULTS The 100 videos analyzed showed the following results: 140,027,282 views; 7,201,187 "likes"; 165,624 "dislikes"; 352,541 comments; and a total duration of 12 hours, 28 minutes, and 12 seconds. In terms of content, death was mentioned in 71 videos, and the top prevention behaviors listed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were addressed by less than one-third of the videos. Most YouTube videos could do a greater job of disseminating information about COVID-19 prevention behaviors, promoting population adherence. CONCLUSIONS Educating, mobilizing, and engaging the public in adopting and practicing behaviors for community mitigation are differential aspects of successfully addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the need for social distancing, YouTube could play an important role in interaction and communication about COVID-19 and be a significant complementary information strategy to combat the pandemic.