Interactions between emotional and cognitive engagement with science on YouTube

Abstract

This study aimed to map and characterize public engagement with science on YouTube. A two-part study was conducted. First, we collected and quantitatively analyzed trending videos on YouTube to evaluate the magnitude of public interaction with science content. Then, we assessed actual, rather than self-reports of, media interactions with science-related YouTube trending videos. We tested associations between behavioral engagement of viewing, liking, disliking or commenting, and emotional and cognitive engagement. Our findings affirm that science content attracts high public interest and that emotional and cognitive engagement with science on social media are distinct, but interrelated. We show that regardless of the valence of emotional engagement, emotion is linked to greater behavioral engagement of posting comments and to greater cognitive engagement of argumentative deliberation. Therefore, our findings suggest that social media interactions, which tend to evoke emotional responses, are a promising means of advancing person-to-person engagement with science.

Análisis desde la perspectiva de género del engagement de los principales youtubers de divulgación científica=Analysis of the engagement of the main popular science youtubers from a gender perspective

“…Las razones de esta interacción diferencial con los videos de mujeres y hombres pueden deberse a diferentes causas que sería recomendable seguir estudiando desde una perspectiva sociológica. No obstante, la importancia de este indicador radica en que, según estudios realizados anteriormente, el engagement conductual puede estar vinculado a un mayor engagement emocional y cognitivo, lo que, en su conjunto, finalmente contribuye a generar un mayor interés e implicación de las nuevas generaciones con los temas científicos (Dubovi y Tabak, 2021).…”

“…Cuando se habla de engagement es importante diferenciar entre el engagement comportamental, el emocional y el cognitivo (Dubovi y Tabak, 2021). En el caso de YouTube, el engagement comportamental, se expresa simbólicamente a través de la cuantificación de acciones como los likes/disdikes, número de comentarios o número de visualizaciones.…”

“…El engagement emocional implica la búsqueda de significados del texto en contexto y permite la atribución de una valencia emocional de los comentarios que se identifica a través del análisis de contenido o cualitativo de los mismos. Por último, el engagement cognitivo implica un esfuerzo intelectual por parte de la audiencia en relación con el contenido del video, lo que se produce, por ejemplo, cuando se abre un debate entre los espectadores, rebatiendo afirmaciones del video o aportando evidencias para respaldar o cuestionar un determinado argumento (Dubovi y Tabak, 2021).…”

Understanding the Emotional Impact of GIFs on Instagram through Consumer Neuroscience

“…Following this last idea, the link between behavior and expressed emotion has been seen in studies that have investigated the emotional state and the engagement in social networks. Most notably, Dubovi and Tabac (2021) [ 22 ] have tried to determine whether the behavioral engagement of views, likes, dislikes and comments, and the emotional and cognitive engagement in science dissemination channels on YouTube, coincide or not. They show in their study that, regardless of the valence of emotional engagement, emotion is linked to higher behavioral engagement in posting comments and to higher cognitive engagement in argumentative deliberation.…”

“…The measure of emotional valence is being used as an indicator of the success of social media communication campaigns. This measure is often obtained from automated emotional analyses of user comments, which are considered an explicit measure as they are self-expressed in the form of texts and emojis [ 7 , 8 , 22 , 29 ] (Kralj et al, 2015; Driscoll, 2015; Turnbull and Jenkins, 2016; Dubovi and Tabac, 2021). However, neuromarketing techniques can also be used to analyze the unstated (implicit) responses of the target audience.…”