Youtube videos related to the fukushima nuclear disaster: Content analysis

Abstract

Background: YouTube (Alphabet Incorporated) has become the most popular video-sharing platform in the world. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) disaster resulted in public anxiety toward nuclear power and radiation worldwide. YouTube is an important source of information about the FDNPP disaster for the world. Objective: This study's objectives were to examine the characteristics of YouTube videos related to the FDNPP disaster, analyze the content and comments of videos with a quantitative method, and determine which features contribute to making a video popular with audiences. This study is the first to examine FDNPP disaster-related videos on YouTube. Methods: We searched for the term "Fukushima nuclear disaster" on YouTube on November 2, 2019. The first 60 eligible videos in the relevance, upload date, view count, and rating categories were recorded. Videos that were irrelevant, were non-English, had inappropriate words, were machine synthesized, and were <3 minutes long were excluded. In total, 111 videos met the inclusion criteria. Parameters of the videos, including the number of subscribers, length, the number of days since the video was uploaded, region, video popularity (views, views/day, likes, likes/day, dislikes, dislikes/day, comments, comments/day), the tone of the videos, the top ten comments, affiliation, whether Japanese people participated in the video, whether the video recorder visited Fukushima, whether the video contained theoretical knowledge, and whether the video contained information about the recent situation in Fukushima, were recorded. By using criteria for content and technical design, two evaluators scored videos and grouped them into the useful (score: 11-14), slightly useful (score: 6-10), and useless (score: 0-5) video categories. Results: Of the 111 videos, 43 (38.7%) videos were useful, 43 (38.7%) were slightly useful, and 25 (22.5%) were useless. Useful videos had good visual and aural effects, provided vivid information on the Fukushima disaster, and had a mean score of 12 (SD 0.9). Useful videos had more views per day (P