Vaccine Hesitancy on YouTube: a Competition between Health and Politics

YouTube has rapidly emerged as a predominant platform for content consumption, effectively displacing conventional media such as television and news outlets. A part of the enormous video stream uploaded to this platform includes health-related content, both from official public health organizations, and from any individual or group that can make an account. The quality of information available on YouTube is a critical point of public health safety, especially when concerning major interventions, such as vaccination. This study differentiates itself from previous efforts of auditing YouTube videos on this topic by conducting a systematic daily collection of posted videos mentioning vaccination for the duration of 3 months. We show that the competition for the public's attention is between public health messaging by institutions and individual educators on one side, and commentators on society and politics on the other, the latest contributing the most to the videos expressing stances against vaccination. Videos opposing vaccination are more likely to mention politicians and publication media such as podcasts, reports, and news analysis, on the other hand, videos in favor are more likely to mention specific diseases or health-related topics. Finally, we find that, at the time of analysis, only 2.7% of the videos have been taken down (by the platform or the channel), despite 20.8% of the collected videos having a vaccination hesitant stance, pointing to a lack of moderation activity for hesitant content. The availability of high-quality information is essential to improve awareness and compliance with public health interventions. Our findings help characterize the public discourse around vaccination on one of the largest media platforms, disentangling the role of the different creators and their stances, and as such, they provide important insights for public health communication policy.