Genç Y. S., Moroğlu N., Moroğlu B., Yıldırım A., Erdem R.
Cleft Palate Craniofacial Journal, sa.OnlineFirst, ss.1-15, 2026 (Scopus)
Özet
Objective
To analyze YouTube comments related to cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) using an infodemiology approach, and to identify prominent themes, emotional patterns, and opportunity/risk areas within the online information ecosystem.
Design
A large-scale, mixed-methods cultural infodemiology study. Manual thematic analysis findings were integrated with structural topic modeling (STM) outputs and lexicon-based sentiment analysis (AFINN, NRC) through data triangulation.
Setting
Publicly available CL/P-related YouTube videos and user comments.
Patients, Participants
No patients were recruited; only publicly available comments were analyzed.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Themes derived from STM and manual coding; frequencies of NRC emotion categories; AFINN sentiment scores; word-frequency/word-cloud findings.
Results
A total of 10 550 videos and 23 922 comments were analyzed. In sentiment analysis, positive, joy, and trust categories were predominant, while fear was more prominent among negative emotions. According to AFINN, the overall mean sentiment score across the study period was 1.158, indicating a generally positive trend. Analyses identified 10 main themes and 33 subthemes; prominent themes included psychosocial burden and identity, stigma and bullying, parenting/caregiving burden, a multi-stage treatment process, functional difficulties (speech-feeding-hearing), information seeking, access/cost issues, and misinformation/myth-based explanations.
Conclusions
YouTube comments constitute an ecosystem that is both supportive and risk-prone in the context of CL/P. The development of brief, evidence-based video series, standardized “myth–fact” content, clear signposting to trusted resources, and early referral mechanisms for severe psychological distress signals is recommended. In addition, strengthening the visibility of such content through engagement-promoting campaigns may be effective in increasing public awareness.