Relationship Between Cognitive Features and Social Media Engagement: An Analysis of YouTube Science Videos

Engagement is critical for social media and learning. Yet research on engagement with YouTube educational videos has been lacking despite the increasing popularity of YouTube as a viable social media platform for learning. In this article, we address this research gap. We adopt the social media engagement 4-I model (involvement, intimacy, interaction, and influence) and investigate how the cognitive features of segmenting and signaling in YouTube educational videos collectively relate to social media engagement. We sampled YouTube science videos on physics and astronomy topics. We measured social media engagement from YouTube analytics and coded the cognitive features of segmenting and signaling (textual and visual signaling) in the YouTube videos. Our analyses show that segmenting has a significant negative relationship with three dimensions of social engagement (involvement, intimacy, and interaction). They also reveal that textual signaling has a significant relationship with three dimensions (involvement, intimacy, and interaction) and visual signaling with all four dimensions of social media engagement. Our study contributes to the literature on social media engagement. It also adds to the multimedia learning literature. Our study provides guidelines for video designers and developers to engage video viewers on social media better.