Early Childhood Learning Videos on YouTube: A Thematic Analysis of Viewer’s Perceptions

Abstract

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.