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The recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014–2015 has been the largest and longest lasting to date. Media coverage about the outbreak has been extensive, but there are large gaps in our understanding of the ways in which widely accessed social media sites are used during times of public health crisis. The purpose of this study was to analyze widely viewed videos about EVD on the YouTube video-sharing site.
We coded the source, content, and characteristics of the 100 most widely viewed videos about EVD on YouTube.
The videos included in the sample were viewed more than 73 million times. The death toll in West Africa was mentioned in nearly one-third of the videos. Over one-third of the videos mentioned how EVD was generally transmitted. There was little mention of treatment and no mention of the need for US funding of disaster preparedness; coordination between local, state, and federal governments; or beds ready for containment. No significant differences in the number of views were identified between video sources with the exception of a significantly higher number of views for “consumer videos” compared with “commercial television videos.”
With 1 billion unique users a month, YouTube has potential for both enhancing education and spreading misinformation. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:531-535)
The treatment of thunder and lightning in traditional Chinese writings demonstrates that many modern intellectuals have exaggerated the Neo-Confucian tendencies toward rational explanations and careful classification. The Chinese literati from traditional through modern times accepted as a self-evident fact the notion that thunder rather than lightning was the destructive force in thunderstorms. Moreover, captivated by popular beliefs that linked thunder with divine powers (Hammond 1992), few Chinese scholars were prepared to take the truly modern step of suggesting that thunder and lightning might be examples of natural forces acting randomly. This misunderstanding was compounded by the literati's indifference toward empirical investigation, which meant that they were unable to question the mistaken assumptions underlying this belief.
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