Thanks for Thomas Krichel's message. Actually, in my earlier post, I was just reacting to what to me seemed preposterous - that people could use random YouTube videos for their health education. Emphasis on "random" - there are of course many excellent and high-quality health-related videos on YouTube. The trick is to identify which are good, which are harmlessly wrong and which are dangerously bogus.
However, if a domain were to be established for trusted health (and other) information, then there could certainly be a section devoted to high quality, accurate videos - YouTube could even be invited partner in the effort to identify such material. I made the recommendation that WHO should revive its attempt to establish such a trusted domain (in Infodemics and infodemiology: a short history, a long future, in WHO’s PanAm J Public Health: https://iris.paho.org/bitstream/handle/10665.2/53850/v45e402021.pdf), but suspect that past experience will act against that.
Best,
Chris
Chris Zielinski
chris@chriszielinski.com
Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com
Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net
HIFA profile: Chris Zielinski: As a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Global Health, Chris leads the Partnerships in Health Information (Phi) programme at the University of Winchester. Formerly an NGO, Phi supports knowledge development and brokers healthcare information exchanges of all kinds. Chris has held senior positions in publishing and knowledge management with WHO in Brazzaville, Geneva, Cairo and New Delhi, with FAO in Rome, ILO in Geneva, and UNIDO in Vienna. Chris also spent three years in London as Chief Executive of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. He was the founder of the ExtraMED project (Third World biomedical journals on CD-ROM), and managed the Gates Foundation-supported Health Information Resource Centres project. He served on WHO’s Ethical Review Committee, and was an originator of the African Health Observatory. Chris has been a director of the World Association of Medical Editors, UK Copyright Licensing Agency, Educational Recording Agency, and International Association of Audiovisual Writers and Directors. He has served on the boards of several NGOs and ethics groupings (information and computer ethics and bioethics). UK-based, he is also building houses in Zambia. chris AT chriszielinski.com
His publications are at www.ResearchGate.net and https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/ and his blogs are http://ziggytheblue.wordrpress.com and https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ziggytheblue
