Cancer Treatment Using Herbals in Arabic Social Media: Content Analysis of YouTube Videos

Daabes, Ajayeb Abu

doi:10.1109/cancercare.2018.8618247

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Using herbal treatment becomes central topic because of its significance as a public health concern. Abu Daabes (2018) stated that this kind of medicine contains substances that could be harmful to some people with cancer. None of the explored videos included a website or physical address, which means that users are not able to connect for additional resources.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A content analysis of Arabic YouTube videos for cancer treatment

Daabes¹,

Kharbat

2019

IJHG

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and assess Arabic videos related to cancer treatment to gain insights about the nature of health information as it is shared on YouTube. Accordingly, future strategies for different bodies are suggested to promote effective communication. Design/methodology/approach The approach is to select a representative sample of YouTube videos for certain search terms related to cancer treatment in the Arabic language. In order to identify the search terms, Google Trends is utilized. To retrieve the most relevant videos, a simple python tool is developed using YouTube API V3. For this study, the first 150 relevant videos are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Objective data and subjective data are collected for each video and analyzed. Objective data include video title, URL, length, view count, like count, dislike count, comment count and the associated tags. For content analysis, coding themes are defined for the subjective data as follows: video format, video authorship and video content. Video content includes three categories: types of treatments, targeted part and evidence-based indicators. Findings The study included 150 videos, from which 30 videos were not content related; therefore, 120 videos remain in the analysis. Using rounding values, it can be observed that the average video lasted 10 min, had 184,966 views, was commented on 263 times, was liked by 2,295 users and disliked by 148 users. Non-professional individuals (46 percent) posted less than half of the videos, whereas public institutions posted only 18 percent of videos. More than half of videos (56 percent) promoted using herbal, botanical, and other natural products for cancer treatment. The majority of YouTube video formats were videos (52 percent), followed by audio with captions (30 percent). News and stories were the dominant videos, with (16 percent), and other types of videos were mostly testimonials and private centers promotions. Only 6 and 9 percent of videos targeted the genetic and immune systems, respectively. Out of the 120 analyzed videos, 86 percent did not mention any risk factor for the recommended treatment, and 73 percent did not offer the details of their usage direction. Research limitations/implications Researchers need to understand the information that is currently available on social media platforms related to the high-risk diseases in order to design initiatives, tools, and actions to allow an easy effective transfer of knowledge. Practical implications Recounting in-depth knowledge of YouTube cancer treatment contents will allow policy makers, YouTube management, medical organizations, and government agencies to understand the viewers’ behavior of YouTube and their needs to provide accurate and trustworthy information to adopt evidence-based resources. Social implications Creating the suitable content, in terms of health promotion strategies, associated with the appropriate format and understandable language that people need will be one of the major responsibilities of YouTube management, government and professional bodies. The well-designed health messages will enhance users’ engagement and attention to health issues from trusted sources. Originality/value There is very less information about Arabic messages in social media, YouTube in particular, specifically regarding cancer treatment. Thus, this study is one of the first studies to explore how Arabic messages are presented on YouTube. The aim of the assessment is to extract the current status and suggest future strategies for different bodies to have effective communication toward the Arabic communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A content analysis of Arabic YouTube videos for cancer treatment

Daabes¹,

Kharbat

2019

IJHG

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Cancer (n ¼ 18) Abramson et al (2015), Adhikari et al (2016), Alsyouf et al (2019), Aydin and Akyol (2019), Basnet et al (2019), Braun et al (2019), Carneiro and Dizon (2019), Chung (2017), Daabes (2018), Gage-Bouchard et al (2018, 2019, Ghenai and Mejova (2018)…”

Section: Disease Disorders and Ailmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media in health communication: A literature review of information quality

Afful-Dadzie

Egala

2021

HIM J

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Background: Social media is used in health communication by individuals, health professionals, disease centres and other health regulatory bodies. However, varying degrees of information quality are churned out daily on social media. This review is concerned with the quality of Social Media Health Information (SMHI). Objective: The review sought to understand how SMHI quality issues have been framed and addressed in the literature. Health topics, users and social media platforms that have raised health information quality concerns are reviewed. The review also looked at the suitability of existing criteria and instruments used in evaluating SMHI and identified gaps for future research. Method: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and the forward chaining strategy were used in the document search. Data were sourced according to inclusion criteria from five academic databases, namely Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed and MEDLINE. Results: A total of 93 articles published between 2000 and 2019 were used in the review. The review revealed a worrying trend of health content and communication on social media, especially of cancer, dental care and diabetes information on YouTube. The review further discovered that the Journal of the American Medical Association, the DISCERN and the Health on the Net Foundation, which were designed before the advent of social media, continue to be used as quality evaluation instruments for SMHI, even though technical and user characteristics of social media differ from traditional portals such as websites. Conclusion: The study synthesises varied opinions on SMHI quality in the literature and recommends that future research proposes quality evaluation criteria and instruments specifically for SMHI.

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