Persuasion Using Video Narratives: Case of Engagement with Videos on YouTube About COVID-19: An Abstract

Abstract

Since November 2019, when the cases of COVID-19 were first reported, millions of people have been affected by the pandemic in some way. Social media has played a major role in generation and dissemination of information about the pandemic. This information on the social media has been posted by a wide range of individuals and organizations including government agencies, health organizations or professionals, news organizations or reporters, for profit and nonprofit organizations, and political, religious, corporate, or community leaders. Irrespective of the content or modality, the main objective of people/organizations posting information on social media is to spread their message to as many people as possible. The objective of this research is to examine the factors that contribute to user engagement with video content posted on YouTube on COVID-19 related topics. As such, the influence of YouTube videos about COVID-19 is examined within the context of narrative persuasion as compared with argument-based persuasion. This research is based on a unique approach to first analyze the content of YouTube videos in terms of having argument-based persuasive elements versus having narrative-based persuasive elements using text analysis. Content of videos is then related to user engagement metrics to assess which type of content (argument-based versus narrative-based) can generate greater user engagement. Data for the study were collected from YouTube videos about COVID-19 (N=831). Content of selected videos was extracted in the form of transcripts of posted videos and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (LIWC2015) (Pennebaker et al., 2015a; Pennebaker et al., 2015b). Measures of argument-based content of videos (analytical thinking and clout) and narrative-based (authentic and emotional tone) were based on variables reported by LIWC2015. YouTube engagement metrics reflect how viewers interact with posted videos. Of the four publicly available engagement metrics three were used (number of likes, number of dislikes, and number of comments) as dependent variables. Overall, results indicate that narrative-based content in YouTube videos related to COVID-19 have stronger relationship with viewer engagement compared with argument-based content on the same platform.