Viewer’s Emotion and It’s Associated Design Elements in Political Video-Based Medium Using Thematic Analysis

Abstract

YouTube has their own “communication power” via its broadcasted videos. Nowadays, this video-based medium has been used in many official campaigns by political parties and citizens to win the hearts and minds of people by portraying many social reality issues related to politics, which in turn could affect unity amongst the people. Henceforth, to understand how people’s emotional responses towards the political agenda videos posted on YouTube could influence unity, specifically for the Malays, this study conducted interviews with experts from three different backgrounds, i.e. politics, psychology and cinematography. These experts have examined the contents of the videos for the purposes of confirming their suitability in conveying their messages. Upon analysis and confirmation of the videos by the experts, this study proceeded with a Thematic Analysis. The objectives of this analysis are; i) to identify the Kansei Words (KWs) and their perceived affect, and ii) to classify the positive and negative emotions and items and categories of the selected videos – based on the expert’s justifications and perspectives. This study therefore used a seven-phase procedure in conducting the thematic analysis, which was adapted from a six-phase guide of the procedure framework provided by Braun and Clark (2006). After the thorough process of identifying and classifying the themes, eventually, this study successfully identified and classified 61 items of emotions and a total of 10 items and 88 categories of design elements over all 17 videos. The resulting set of emotions provide dimension that contributes access to emotional experience viewers would feel when viewing political YouTube videos. Thus, the results from this study are proposed to be utilised as a basis of understanding for future investigation into emotions, especially in political awareness, as well as the design elements of videos, which could influence unity.