Short-video platforms are important sources of cerebral infarction-related health information, but the completeness, reliability, and platform differences of such content remain unclear. This study compared engagement, topic coverage, and information quality of cerebral infarction-related videos on TikTok and Bilibili. Using the keyword "cerebral infarction," we screened the top 150 search results from each platform. Of 300 retrieved videos, 289 were included (TikTok: n = 146; Bilibili: n = 143). Video duration and engagement metrics were extracted, and uploaders were classified as doctors of health professions (DHPs), non-doctors of health professions (NDHPs), or individual users. Topic coverage was coded as not covered, partially covered, or completely covered. Information quality and reliability were assessed using GQS, mDISCERN, JAMA benchmarks, and VIQI. Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis with Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc tests, and Spearman correlation analyses were performed. Content coverage was uneven. Epidemiology was absent in 85.8% of videos and completely covered in only 0.3%, whereas diagnosis was absent in 69.6% and completely covered in 10.0%. Etiology and clinical manifestations were more frequently addressed, with complete coverage in 61.2% and 37.7%, respectively. Bilibili videos were longer than TikTok videos, whereas TikTok videos showed higher likes, collections, comments, and shares (all P < .001). Platform differences were observed across all 4 quality instruments. TikTok videos had higher JAMA scores, whereas Bilibili videos had higher mDISCERN and VIQI scores; GQS also differed significantly despite a median score of 3.0 on both platforms. DHP-uploaded videos had higher quality scores than NDHP- or individual-user videos across all 4 instruments (all P < .001). Platform-stratified correlations between engagement and quality scores were weak, ranging from r = -0.257 to r = 0.139 on TikTok and from R = 0.066 to R = 0.298 on Bilibili. Cerebral infarction-related videos on TikTok and Bilibili showed modest overall quality and gaps in key actionable domains, particularly epidemiology and diagnosis. Engagement was a poor proxy for information quality. Stronger credibility labeling, source disclosure, and quality-aware recommendation strategies may improve short-video health information.
Xie et al. (Fri,) studied this question.