Space videos on YouTube - what makes the audience tick

Abstract

Nowadays it is easier than ever before to produce films and videos and make them available to a worldwide audience via platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, among others. The European Space Agency (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other similar organisations constantly produce videos aimed at the general interested audience, and distribute them on through their social media channels. Different formats are offered such as educational, informative, news style, science stories, scientist profiles, behind-the-scenes, animations and data based animations. But which of these formats do really stick and why? A simple statistical analysis of 106 videos found on the ESA, ESO and NASA YouTube channels shows that videos based on animations and the representation of data, with little to no explanation and accompanied by music are the more popular in terms of views per month by about a factor of two compared to other types of videos. This can likely be explained by the higher entertainment value of such videos.