Short-Video Apps as a Health Information Source for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Information Quality Assessment of TikTok Videos (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has become one of the most critical public health problems worldwide. Because many COPD patients are using video-based social media to search for health information, there is an urgent need to assess the information quality of COPD videos on social media. Recently, the short-video app TikTok has demonstrated huge potential in disseminating health information and there are currently many COPD videos available on TikTok; however, the information quality of these videos remains unknown. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the information quality of COPD videos on TikTok. METHODS In December 2020, we retrieved and screened 300 videos from TikTok and collected a sample of 199 COPD-related videos in Chinese for data extraction. We extracted the basic video information, coded the content, and identified the video sources. Two independent raters assessed the information quality of each video using the DISCERN instrument. RESULTS COPD videos on TikTok came mainly from two types of sources: individual users (n=168) and organizational users (n=31). The individual users included health professionals, individual science communicators, and general TikTok users, whereas the organizational users consisted of for-profit organizations, nonprofit organizations, and news agencies. For the 199 videos, the mean scores of the DISCERN items ranged from 3.42 to 4.46, with a total mean score of 3.75. Publication reliability (<i>P</i>=.04) and overall quality (<i>P</i>=.02) showed significant differences across the six types of sources, whereas the quality of treatment choices showed only a marginally significant difference (<i>P</i>=.053) across the different sources. CONCLUSIONS The overall information quality of COPD videos on TikTok is satisfactory, although the quality varies across different sources and according to specific quality dimensions. Patients should be selective and cautious when watching COPD videos on TikTok.

The Quality and Reliability of Short Videos about Thyroid Nodules on Bilibili and Tiktok: Cross-sectional Study

“…Some evidences indicated that Tiktok had vast communication potential during the COVID-19 pandemic [8,23]. In addition, Bilibili and Tiktok contain numerous popular videos about diabetes, in ammatory bowel disease, obstructive pulmonary disease, liver cancer and other diseases, which have gained a plenty number of likes, comments and so on [11][12][13]24]. In our study, we found a similar trend in the abundance of videos related to thyroid nodules, capturing the interests of viewers.…”

“…The speci c scoring details for GQS are presented in Supplementary Table 3. The GQS and DISCERN score were chosen due to their widespread use in assessing information quality on various video-based platforms or diseases [12,19]. Two quali ed doctors specialized in thyroid disease scored the videos.…”

“…Therefore, it is essential to assess the quality and reliability of short videos available on Bilibili and Tiktok. Previous studies have analyzed the quality of short videos on Tiktok or Bilibili regarding liver cancers [11], thyroid cancers[6], chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases [12], in ammatory bowel diseases[13], gallstone diseases[14] and so on. Importantly, there are a large number of short videos about thyroid nodules with uncertain quality and reliability due to the increased attention paid to thyroid nodules.…”

“…When the results exceed 100, some videos may have little or no relevance to the topic. Secondly, most video viewers tend to focus on the top search results rather than scrolling through the entire list [12,15, 16]. Basic information on the included videos was extracted, including the sources, contents, formats and the video variables: the duration (in seconds), the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves, as well as the number of days since publication.…”