Abstract
BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided updates on the novel coronavirus and the government’s responses to the pandemic in his daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020, delivered on the official Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) YouTube channel.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to examine comments on Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s COVID-19 daily briefings by YouTube users and track these comments to extract the changing dynamics of the opinions and concerns of the public over time.MethodsWe used machine learning techniques to longitudinally analyze a total of 46,732 English YouTube comments that were retrieved from 57 videos of Prime Minister Trudeau’s COVID-19 daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020. A natural language processing model, latent Dirichlet allocation, was used to choose salient topics among the sampled comments for each of the 57 videos. Thematic analysis was used to classify and summarize these salient topics into different prominent themes.ResultsWe found 11 prominent themes, including strict border measures, public responses to Prime Minister Trudeau’s policies, essential work and frontline workers, individuals’ financial challenges, rental and mortgage subsidies, quarantine, government financial aid for enterprises and individuals, personal protective equipment, Canada and China’s relationship, vaccines, and reopening.ConclusionsThis study is the first to longitudinally investigate public discourse and concerns related to Prime Minister Trudeau’s daily COVID-19 briefings in Canada. This study contributes to establishing a real-time feedback loop between the public and public health officials on social media. Hearing and reacting to real concerns from the public can enhance trust between the government and the public to prepare for future health emergencies.
Highlights
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global public health emergency on March 11, 2020 [1]
We identified 11 themes from the 168 most prominent topics, including strict border measures, public response to Prime Minister Trudeau’s policies, essential work and frontline workers, individuals’ financial challenges, rental and mortgage subsidies, quarantine, government financial aid for enterprises and individuals, personal protective equipment, Canada and China’s relationship, vaccines, and reopening
Our results suggest that the “border policy issue” has continuously been a concern for Canadians, who support strict border measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Canada
Summary
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global public health emergency on March 11, 2020 [1]. We analyzed the YouTube comments under Prime Minister Trudeau’s daily briefing videos. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided updates on the novel coronavirus and the government’s responses to the pandemic in his daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020, delivered on the official Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) YouTube channel. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine comments on Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s COVID-19 daily briefings by YouTube users and track these comments to extract the changing dynamics of the opinions and concerns of the public over time. Methods: We used machine learning techniques to longitudinally analyze a total of 46,732 English YouTube comments that were retrieved from 57 videos of Prime Minister Trudeau’s COVID-19 daily briefings from March 13 to May 22, 2020. Hearing and reacting to real concerns from the public can enhance trust between the government and the public to prepare for future health emergencies
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