Duran-Becerra Beatriz, Hillyer Grace C, Cosgrove Alison, Basch Corey H
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University, NY, NY 10032, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University NY, NY 10032, USA.
Health Promot Perspect. 2020 Jul 12;10(3):282-286. doi: 10.34172/hpp.2020.42. eCollection 2020.
Climate change is one of the most critical threats to our society. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe the content of the most viewed climate change videos on YouTube. The term "climate change" was used to search on YouTube to garner a sample of the 100most widely-viewed videos. Videos in a language other than English, or considered irrelevant, were excluded. Using a fact sheet from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, content categories were created and successively coded. The mean number of views for the 100 videos evaluated was 231,140.2 views (SD=718, 399.5) and the mean length was 12.1 minutes (SD= 24.1). Most videos were uploaded by a news source (77.0%), included a belief that climate change is happening (77.0%), and mentioned the impact of climate change on the environment (71.0%). Only one-third of the videos mentioned how to prevent climate change (33.0%). More than half focused on a specific environment and, of those, 47.2% specifically focused on cities. Compared to videos that did not focus on a specific environment, the videos with an environmental focus were more often intended for adults (87.3% vs. 53.3%, P≤0.001). This study highlights the need for climate change YouTube videos intended for youth. Targeting youth may lead to engagement of younger generations in climate change discourse and inspire climate action. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of YouTube as a platform for educational videos on climate change.
气候变化是我们社会面临的最严峻威胁之一。这项横断面研究的目的是描述YouTube上观看量最高的气候变化相关视频的内容。在YouTube上使用“气候变化”一词进行搜索，以获取100个观看量最高的视频样本。非英语语言的视频或被认为不相关的视频被排除。利用美国国家航空航天局的情况说明书，创建了内容类别并进行了连续编码。所评估的100个视频的平均观看次数为231,140.2次（标准差=718,399.5），平均时长为12.1分钟（标准差=24.1）。大多数视频由新闻来源上传（77.0%），包含气候变化正在发生的观点（77.0%），并提及气候变化对环境的影响（71.0%）。只有三分之一的视频提到了如何预防气候变化（33.0%）。超过一半的视频聚焦于特定环境，其中47.2%特别聚焦于城市。与未聚焦于特定环境的视频相比，聚焦于环境的视频更常面向成年人（87.3%对53.3%，P≤0.001）。本研究强调了面向青少年的气候变化YouTube视频的必要性。针对青少年可能会促使年轻一代参与气候变化讨论并激发气候行动。需要进一步研究以确定YouTube作为气候变化教育视频平台的有效性。
