Ethics for Disseminating Health-Related Information on YouTube

1/4 https://jkms.orgSocial media platforms are increasingly employed worldwide to disseminate publicly available information and promote the interests of diverse groups of online users. 1 Students, researchers, clinicians, and patients are all exposed to a variety of such platforms to search through and satisfy their academic and societal needs.As a prime example, researchers' works are increasingly covered by online news outlets and video-sharing platforms, which translate sophisticated scientific achievements into comprehendible information, thereby popularizing science. 2 The extent of social media use depends on language preferences and socioeconomic factors which are taken into account when reaching out to users in different countries and regions. 3The ease of posting and speed of disseminating information on social media enables communication between post creators and viewers in online and offline formats.Social media posts often include audio and visual materials supported with language translation tools to maximize audience engagement. 4Some of the publicly posted comments, such as those on X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, are quantitatively weighed, contributing to aggregate alternative metrics.These metrics generated by Altmetric.comhelp track trends and distinguish the most influential scholarly articles, particularly in the early post-publication period.While current health research and practice are increasingly relying on ubiquitous social media, increasing public awareness of their uses, strengths, and limitations and creating an infrastructure for posting reliable, evidence-based, and ethically sound information is increasingly important.Social media posts are often generated by public and institutional representatives who aim to engage their followers and interested users by providing feedback, commenting, and sharing information.Health-related information can be linked to anecdotal empiric experience, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, practice guidelines, and promotional medical and pharmaceutical content.Viewer discretion is often advisable since the disseminated information may contain sensitive and copyright-protected materials.Notably, public health researchers embrace social media, particularly YouTube, for study recruitments and interventions in chronic diseases, mental health, substance abuse, and infections. 5n most cases, YouTube posts on patient-sensitive and identifying information require accompanying ethics notes such as ethics approval or exemption from full ethics review.