YouTube as an information source of floating agriculture: analysis of Bengali language contents quality and viewers’ interaction

Bangladesh is physically low-lying and prone to flooding, making floating agriculture an appropriate method for dealing with floods and assisting farmers in coping. This YouTube content study was conducted to investigate the quality of information found on YouTube regarding floating agriculture in Bengali language, as well as viewers' interactions to such videos. The inquiry began with a search on https://www.youtube.com for the keyword ", ভাসমান কৃষি (Floating Agriculture)," which obtained 302 results. Following that, a total of 245 contents were discarded due to their inability to fulfill the inclusion criteria. Data on likes, dislikes, views, duration, comments, publisher type, and publishing year were retrieved from videos. The quality of contents was measured by a grading methodology that took into account two aspects: i) Comprehensive aspect; and ii) Floating agriculture aspect. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to investigate multiple comparisons (P < 0.05 considered as statistically significant). Viewers' Sentiments, emotion, and intention towards the videos were analyzed from comments. A total of 26.32% contents were of high quality, with the majority of videos released by independent publishers and the quantity of videos on an upward trend. According to floating agriculture video demographics, mean view (70816.60 ± 177319.129), mean like (818.56 ± 1992.700), mean duration (07:47 ± 06:48 min), and mean comment (18.40 ± 38.537). The amount of views, likes, and duration varied statistically significantly in relation to different content quality categories. Comments analysis revealed that the majority of the viewers' possessed positive sentiments and happy responses, whereas most of the comment was for feedback purposes. In conclusion, despite the fact that the number of high-quality videos on YouTube regarding floating agriculture was limited, viewers seem to be satisfied with those videos. This is the first paper that critically assessed the quality of floating agriculture -related YouTube videos as well as identified viewers' interaction towards those videos. This report highlights the present scenario of YouTube content regarding floating agriculture which will help content creators to produce quality videos. Understanding the viewers’ interaction would set new dimensions in policy implications regarding effective information dissemination.