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Content and commentary: HPV vaccine and YouTube.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination has demonstrated efficacy; however, many vaccine-eligible remain unvaccinated. YouTube is a popular video-sharing platform with several topics, including the HPV vaccine. Our purpose is to examine the tone of YouTube videos toward the HPV vaccine, accuracy of the information displayed, and content of commentary.

DESIGN: This observational study investigated publicly available content regarding the HPV vaccine on the video-sharing website YouTube (www.youtube.com). Videos and comments were collected between June 22, 2014 and December 19th , 2014. A total of 35 videos, with the 100 most recent comments for each video were collected and coded by a single researcher. A 25% subsample were by a second researcher to ensure inter-rater agreement of greater than 80%.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Videos were evaluated for four types of information: descriptive information, tone toward the vaccine (anti- or pro-vaccine), content and commentary content, sorted by 11 frequently identified themes.

SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable.

RESULTS: The majority of videos were negative in tone toward the vaccine. Tone of the video was not a predictor of video popularity. Pro-vaccine videos were four times more likely to report information accurately than anti-vaccine videos. Anti-vaccine videos were more likely to report information incorrectly and omit information. The most frequent commentary themes were concerning serious side effects, conspiracy theories and vaccines generally being unhealthy.

CONCLUSIONS: The internet is an important resource for the general population; widely-viewed YouTube videos contain erroneous and incomplete information. Anti-vaccine ideology is prevalent in video content and commentary.

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