Playing with food. A novel approach to understanding nutritional behaviour development

A vicious cycle: a cross-sectional study of canine tail-chasing and human responses to it, using a free video-sharing website

Tail-chasing is widely celebrated as normal canine behaviour in cultural references. However, all previous scientific studies of tail-chasing or 'spinning' have comprised small clinical populations of dogs with neurological, compulsive or other pathological conditions; most were ultimately euthanased. Thus, there is great disparity between scientific and public information on tail-chasing. I gathered data on the first large (n = 400), non-clinical tail-chasing population, made possible through a vast, free, online video repository, YouTube™. The demographics of this online population are described and discussed. Approximately one third of tail-chasing dogs showed clinical signs, including habitual (daily or 'all the time') or perseverative (difficult to distract) performance of the behaviour. These signs were observed across diverse breeds. Clinical signs appeared virtually unrecognised by the video owners and commenting viewers; laughter was recorded in 55% of videos, encouragement in 43%, and the commonest viewer descriptors were that the behaviour was 'funny' (46%) or 'cute' (42%). Habitual tail-chasers had 6.5+/-2.3 times the odds of being described as 'Stupid' than other dogs, and perseverative dogs were 6.8+/-2.1 times more frequently described as 'Funny' than distractible ones were. Compared with breed- and age-matched control videos, tail-chasing videos were significantly more often indoors and with a computer/television screen switched on. These findings highlight that tail-chasing is sometimes pathological, but can remain untreated, or even be encouraged, because of an assumption that it is 'normal' dog behaviour. The enormous viewing figures that YouTube™ attracts (mean+/-s.e. = 863+/-197 viewings per tail-chasing video) suggest that this perception will be further reinforced, without effective intervention.

Informational value and bias of videos related to orthodontics screened on a video-sharing Web site

OBJECTIVE

To assess the informational value, intention, source, and bias of videos related to orthodontics screened by the video-sharing Internet platform YouTube.

METHODS

YouTube (www.youtube.com) was scanned in July 2010 for orthodontics-related videos using an adequately defined search term. Each of the first 30 search results of the scan was categorized with the system-generated sorts "by relevance" and "most viewed" (total: 60). These were rated independently by three assessors, who completed a questionnaire for each video. The data were analyzed statistically using Friedman's test for dependent samples, Kendall's tau, and Fleiss's kappa.

RESULTS

The YouTube scan produced 5140 results. There was a wide variety of information about orthodontics available on YouTube, and the highest proportion of videos was found to originate from orthodontic patients. These videos were also the most viewed ones. The informational content of most of the videos was generally judged to be low, with a rather poor to inadequate representation of the orthodontic profession, although a moderately pro-orthodontics stance prevailed. It was noticeable that the majority of contributions of orthodontists to YouTube constituted advertising. This tendency was not viewed positively by the majority of YouTube users, as was evident in the divergence in the proportions when sorting by "relevance" and "most viewed."

CONCLUSION

In the light of the very large number of people using the Internet as their primary source of information, orthodontists should recognize the importance of YouTube and similar social media Web sites in the opinion-forming process, especially in the case of adolescents.