2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

Home Events & Meetings Annual Meeting Schedule & Program

Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

326326
YouTube Information Consumption and Relay: Analysis of Legalization of Marijuana


Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Annie Yi, Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA
Megan Moreno, MD, MSEd, MPH, Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA
Recent legalization of recreational marijuana has led to public discussion of the health and societal impact of marijuana legalization. YouTube.com is a popular and influential social media site; content regarding marijuana legalization on this platform remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate YouTube videos on marijuana legalization to determine content and proportion of positive, negative and neutral sentiment.

For this content analysis study, videos were selected using the key phrase “legalization of marijuana” and sorted by relevance. Fifty videos including video content, comments and numbers of likes/dislikes were evaluated. Sentiment towards marijuana in the comments was categorized. Further categorization into themes was done in an iterative process. A 20% subsample of comments was analyzed for inter-rater agreement resulting in an 86.6% agreement.

Of the 50 videos relating to marijuana legalization examined, 23 were positive towards marijuana (PTM), 17 were neutral and 10 negative; videos had an average of 18 comments. The majority of comments were PTM (85.4% on positive videos, 88.7% on neutral, 85.8% on negative). Videos that were negative had a greater proportion of dislikes (avg 67.3% dislikes per video) compared to 7.6% and 11.8% on positive and neutral videos. Common themes included harsh attacks on comments about marijuana health effects, as well as comparing marijuana to other substances such as alcohol and coffee.

These findings suggest strong pro-marijuana opinions on YouTube. This data could prove useful in determining public attitude, knowledge and responses towards critical issues, and help identify false information to be countered.

Learning Areas:

Advocacy for health and health education
Communication and informatics
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
Analyze the typical content on YouTube regarding marijuana and marijuana legalization

Keyword(s): Social Media

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I've worked as a research assistant with the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team for a year and a half. In this time I've worked on various grant funded projects relating to social media where I was trained on content analysis and research protocols. This research was mentored by Dr. Megan Moreno an Associate Professor with Seattle Children's Research Institute. This research has also been presented at the University of Washington's Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4175.0: Marijuana use by youth and young adults