Dharma, Data and Deception: An LLM-Powered Rhetorical Analysis of Cow-Urine Health Claims on YouTube

TL;DR

This study uses large language models to analyze the rhetorical strategies in YouTube videos promoting or debunking cow urine as a health remedy, revealing distinct persuasive tactics.

Contribution

It introduces a taxonomy-based annotation method using LLMs to analyze health misinformation and cultural discourse at scale.

Findings

Promoters rely on efficacy appeals and social proof.

Debunkers emphasize authority and rebuttal strategies.

Human evaluation shows 90.1% agreement, validating the approach.

Abstract

Health misinformation remains one of the most pressing challenges on social media, particularly when cultural traditions intersect with scientific-sounding claims. These dynamics are not only global but also deeply local, manifesting in culturally specific controversies that require careful analysis. Motivated by this, we examine 100 YouTube transcripts that promote or debunk cow urine (gomutra) as a health remedy, focusing on rhetorical strategies such as appeals to authority, efficacy appeals, and conspiracy framing. We employ large language models (LLMs) including GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Mistral Medium 3 to annotate transcripts using a 14-category taxonomy of persuasive tactics. Our analysis reveals that promoters predominantly rely on efficacy appeals and social proof, while debunkers emphasize authority and rebuttal. Human evaluation of a subset of annotations yielded 90.1\% inter-annotator agreement, confirming the reliability of our taxonomy and validation process. This work advances computational methods for misinformation analysis and demonstrates how LLMs can support large-scale studies of cultural discourse online.