YouTube as a Source of Information on COVID-19 Vaccines: Sentiment Analysis of User Comments

Türkçe

This study aims to examine Turkish-language YouTube videos on COVID-19 vaccines as sources of information and to reveal the emotional tones reflected in user comments posted on these videos. For this purpose, a search was conducted on YouTube using the keyword “COVID-19 Aşısı”, and the videos were sorted from the most viewed to the least viewed by using the platform’s filtering feature. Repeated videos, non-Turkish content, posts lacking audio and visual material, videos longer than one hour, content unrelated to COVID-19 vaccines, and short videos (YouTube Shorts) were excluded from the analysis. Following this screening process, a total of 150 videos and 73,246 user comments related to these videos were included in this study. The videos were evaluated using content analysis, whereas the user comments were examined utilizing sentiment analysis. User comments were classified by considering the tone of the messages presented in the videos as positive, negative, neutral, or ambiguous. The findings achieved in this study revealed that YouTube is a platform on which content related to COVID-19 vaccines is widely shared. However, it was also determined that the level of involvement of health professionals in the content produced on YouTube and the references made to scientific sources were limited. The sentiment analysis results further indicate that user comments expressing negative emotions were predominant across all message tones.