Medical Discourses on HPV on YouTube

Abstract

The guiding question for this study is: How do medical professionals address HPV-related issues (diseases caused, vaccine efficacy, treatments, etc.) on social media? The aim of this study was to address the overall objective of this study, which was to identify how physicians addressed HPV and the available vaccine on YouTube from 2020 to 2022. The specific objectives are: a) to gather and categorize physicians' discourse on HPV; b) to profile the physicians who delivered the discourses related to HPV.

The categories "Scientific Aspects" (34.59%), "Vaccine Effectiveness" (16.68%), "Age Group" (13.77%), "Gender Covered" (18.35%), and "Associated Diseases" (14.53%) presented approaches that can be perceived as capable of dissuading misinformation. Without any reference to terms like denialism, disinformation, or fake news, they reported approaches that, by providing scientific education, can distance citizens from vaccine refusal and hesitancy.