1 in 4 most-seen Covid Eng videos on Youtube are incorrect: Study
nNEWDELHI: One in four of the mostviewed videos on coronavirus (Covid-19) in English on Youtube are factually incorrect, according to a new study that comes against the backdrop of several websites removing a viral video called “Plandemic” that alleged that the disease was a conspiracy by people looking to profit from it.
Videos from government and professional sources scored high on facts but accounted for just 10% of the around 257 million views considered by researchers from Canada whose study was published in the journal, BMJ Global Health on May 13.
“The public has varying degrees of health literacy. When we consider the enormous volume and diversity of misleading information being generated and spread, it has significant potential for harm,” one of the study’s lead-author Heidi Oi-yee Li, faculty of medicine, University of Ottawa, said over email.“given that Youtube has grown since past outbreaks, its reach is greater than ever [the study says 2 billion users daily], and we felt it was important to evaluate whether misinformation was spreading to wider audiences.”
The researchers used keywords “coronavirus” and “Covid-19” separately to identify the top 75 most-viewed that were in English, shorter than an hour in duration, and excluded non-audio and non-visual content.
They said 69 videos met the criteria and garnered 257,804,146 views. “Our study highlights that over 25% of Youtube’s most viewed English videos contained non-factual or misleading information,” read the study.
“The most viewed video in the study with over 20 million views was produced by a Youtube and television celebrity. Meanwhile, the most popular government video only reached 4 million views,” wrote Heidi.
The problem may be far worse in India where such videos do the rounds as forwards on messaging platforms. “One reason is the legacy issue, where we tend to trust forwards from our elders and superiors without question. Then there is the lack of information literacy, and lastly there is manipulation where a video can be taken out of context,” said P Vigneswara Ilavarasan, professor at Iit-delhi and social media researcher.
“We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information at this critical time... We also have clear policies that prohibit videos promoting medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent Covid-19 in place of seeking treatment, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us,” said a Youtube spokesperson.