Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos

A. Nerghes; Peter Kerkhof; Iina Helsten

doi:10.1145/3201064.3201086

Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos

A. Nerghes, Peter Kerkhof, Iina Helsten

DHLab

Research output: Chapter in book/volume › Contribution to conference proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the content of the most popular videos posted on YouTube in the first phase of the Zika-virus outbreak in 2016, and the user responses to those videos. More specifically, we examine the extent to which informational and conspiracy theory videos differ in terms of user activity (number of comments, shares, likes and dislikes), and the sentiment and content of the user responses. Our results show that 12 out of the 35 videos in our data set focused on conspiracy theories, but no statistical differences were found in the number of user activity and sentiment between the two types of videos. The content of the user responses shows that users respond differently to sub-topics related to Zika-virus. The implications of the results for future online health promotion campaigns are discussed.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science
Place of Publication	New York, NY, USA
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	127-134
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-5563-6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3201064.3201086
Publication status	Published - 15 May 2018

Keywords

Zika-virus
YouTube
Informational and Conspiracy Theory Videos
topic modeling
Semantic networks

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10.1145/3201064.3201086

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/3210000/3201086/p127-nerghes.pdf?ip=84.241.213.241&id=3201086&acc=OPEN&key=0C390721DC3021FF%2E5F9071D3233F7DA5%2EF979B7AD8F77EC13%2E6D218144511F3437&__acm__=1527697208_1276374b44030da1e3ed83341fda6e34

Cite this

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title = "Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos",

abstract = "In this paper, we analyze the content of the most popular videos posted on YouTube in the first phase of the Zika-virus outbreak in 2016, and the user responses to those videos. More specifically, we examine the extent to which informational and conspiracy theory videos differ in terms of user activity (number of comments, shares, likes and dislikes), and the sentiment and content of the user responses. Our results show that 12 out of the 35 videos in our data set focused on conspiracy theories, but no statistical differences were found in the number of user activity and sentiment between the two types of videos. The content of the user responses shows that users respond differently to sub-topics related to Zika-virus. The implications of the results for future online health promotion campaigns are discussed.",

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Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos. / Nerghes, A.; Kerkhof, Peter; Helsten, Iina.
Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2018. p. 127-134 .

Research output: Chapter in book/volume › Contribution to conference proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

TY - CHAP

T1 - Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos

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AU - Kerkhof, Peter

AU - Helsten, Iina

PY - 2018/5/15

Y1 - 2018/5/15

N2 - In this paper, we analyze the content of the most popular videos posted on YouTube in the first phase of the Zika-virus outbreak in 2016, and the user responses to those videos. More specifically, we examine the extent to which informational and conspiracy theory videos differ in terms of user activity (number of comments, shares, likes and dislikes), and the sentiment and content of the user responses. Our results show that 12 out of the 35 videos in our data set focused on conspiracy theories, but no statistical differences were found in the number of user activity and sentiment between the two types of videos. The content of the user responses shows that users respond differently to sub-topics related to Zika-virus. The implications of the results for future online health promotion campaigns are discussed.

AB - In this paper, we analyze the content of the most popular videos posted on YouTube in the first phase of the Zika-virus outbreak in 2016, and the user responses to those videos. More specifically, we examine the extent to which informational and conspiracy theory videos differ in terms of user activity (number of comments, shares, likes and dislikes), and the sentiment and content of the user responses. Our results show that 12 out of the 35 videos in our data set focused on conspiracy theories, but no statistical differences were found in the number of user activity and sentiment between the two types of videos. The content of the user responses shows that users respond differently to sub-topics related to Zika-virus. The implications of the results for future online health promotion campaigns are discussed.

KW - Zika-virus

KW - YouTube

KW - Informational and Conspiracy Theory Videos

KW - topic modeling

KW - Semantic networks

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DO - 10.1145/3201064.3201086

M3 - Contribution to conference proceedings

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BT - Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science

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CY - New York, NY, USA

ER -

Early Public Responses to the Zika-Virus on YouTube: Prevalence of and Differences Between Conspiracy Theory and Informational Videos

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Keywords

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