Analysis of laddering downwards for classification of item and category based on emotional values in political video on YouTube

Abstract

Issues relating to racial unity seem to be present in many countries, whether overtly or covertly. It would be more difficult if the racial problems and tension actually occur among a race’s own ethnicity. For as long as the Malays, as the majority race of Malaysia, are not united, Malaysians would find it very difficult to achieve national unity as well. Therefore, this study focused on social reality issues that played on the new media – YouTube. The new media becomes a battlefield for political parties to win the hearts and minds of the people through videos portraying many social reality issues, posted on YouTube. In order to identify the design criterion of videos, this study used the Evaluation Grid Method of Laddering (EGML) for classification of items and categories of social reality issues videos posted on YouTube that relate to Malaysian politics. The EGML technique explored the reason why a given object (video) is important and resulted in a full interpretation of each concept. Henceforth, six participants were involved in this experiment to determine their evaluative views of the videos. The process of laddering downwards assisted the researcher to classify the items and categories of the videos. The process based on features/contents of the videos, whereby the participants were required to explain in terms of the differences of the videos. This study therefore used the guideline from design criterion based on Racial Unity (Film Features) to identify the items and categories of the videos. Eventually, the study resulted in the YouTube videos’ classification of 9 items and 39 categories in session one and 6 items and 32 categories in session two, based on emotion. This classification usable as reference for stakeholders to understand the design elements that affect emotional values when viewing politically related YouTube videos.