Visual Footprint of Separation Through Membrane Distillation on YouTube

Social media has revolutionized the dissemination of information, enabling the rapid and widespread sharing of news, concepts, technologies, and ideas. YouTube is one of the most important online video sharing platforms of our time. In this research, we investigate the trace of separation through membrane distillation (MD) on YouTube using statistical methods and natural language processing. The dataset collected on 04.01.2024 included 212 videos with key characteristics such as durations, views, subscribers, number of comments, likes, etc. The results show that the number of videos is not sufficient, but there is an increasing trend, especially since 2019. The high number of channels offering information about MD technology in countries such as the USA, India, and Canada indicates that these countries recognized the practical benefits of this technology, especially in areas such as water treatment, desalination, and industrial applications. This suggests that MD could play a pivotal role in finding solutions to global water challenges. Word cloud analysis showed that terms such as “water”, “treatment”, “desalination”, and “separation” were prominent, indicating that the videos focused mainly on the principles and applications of MD. The sentiment of the comments is mostly positive, and the dominant emotion is neutral, revealing that viewers generally have a positive attitude towards MD. The narrative intensity metric evaluates the information transfer efficiency of the videos and provides a guide for effective content creation strategies. The results of the analyses revealed that social media awareness about MD technology is still not sufficient and that content development and sharing strategies should focus on bringing the technology to a wider audience.