Early Childhood Learning Videos On Youtube: A Thematic Analysis Of Viewer’s Perceptions

• Published in: Journal of early childhood care and education Vol. 2
• Main Authors: Neelam Yaqoob Tahira Bibi, Malik Omer Mansoor
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Islamabad Allama Iqbal Open University 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Early childhood education; Online instruction; Phenomenology; Preschool children; Sentiment analysis; Social networks; Video Technology; Young Children
• ISSN: 2616-7557; 2616-7565

The study was aimed to investigate the opinions of viewers who have watched early childhood education videos on YouTube regarding their acceptance and suitability of videos for the purpose of Early Childhood Learning (ECL). Furthermore, study focused to explore whether these videos can be useful and effective for the preschool children to educate them basics of knowledge. A qualitative phenomenological approach was used to investigate the perceptions of viewers about their experience of the early childhood learning videos through comments. Ten (10) videos with over 01 million views and uploaded on YouTube within a period of last 02 years were considered as sample of study through purposive homogenous sampling technique. Furthermore, only comments in sensible English language were selected as sample comments for analysis and interpretation purpose. From the selected videos, comments were scraped with the help of open source data mining software (ytcomments). Qualitative thematic sentiment analysis technique was applied to identify significant meanings and themes from the comments of the viewers. The sentiment analysis was supported by the use of NVivo 12 software. Analytical findings emphasized that viewers have a positive perception towards the usefulness and effectiveness of Early Childhood Learning YouTube videos