Social media as source of information for Spanish-speaking patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Although patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) may benefit from health-care information in social media (SoMe), they may also be prone to misleading information. An assessment of the reliability, comprehensiveness, and quality of information uploaded to SoMe for Spanish-speaking patients with SLE is lacking.

This analytical observational study evaluates the videos uploaded to YouTube^® in Spanish about SLE. Information about video length, engagement (i.e., views and likes), time on the internet, popularity index, and source was retrieved, and an evaluation on reliability, comprehensiveness, and quality was performed using standardized scores.

One hundred eighty-six videos were included in the analysis. Most videos were considered as useful (87%) or useful patient opinion (8.1%), whereas only 2.2% were considered misleading and 2.7% as misleading patient opinion. The number of views (Median 7207 vs 113,877, p = .012), popularity index (Median 13.8 vs 168.7, p < .001), number of likes (Median 155 vs 3400, p < .001), and number of dislikes (Median 3 vs 138, p = .004) were higher for misleading videos. The videos uploaded by independent users had a higher engagement than those from government or news agencies, professional organizations or academic channels. Misleading videos and those uploaded by independent users had lower rates of reliability, comprehensiveness and quality (p < .001).

Most of the information shown in YouTube^® videos on SLE tends to be useful. However, audience engagement parameters are larger for misleading videos. Exploring the qualitative features of the most popular videos is necessary to establish what features are more engaging for the audiences and to improve the content and popularity of reliable videos on chronic diseases.