Learning Together with YouTube? Adolescents’ Collective Use of Explanatory Audiovisual Content

Abstract

Although YouTube explanatory videos are a successful genre, there has been little research into the ways they form part of adolescents’ collective learning practices. To address this gap, the article examines the social relations and forms of collective interaction by which young people come to use explanatory content on YouTube. Our study of German pupils aged between 14 and 20 examines how and to what extent they engage with, view, recommend, and communicate about user-generated audiovisual instructions and explanations that cover school subjects and hobbies. The results show that the potentials of YouTube for collectively using learning- and education-related content often remain untapped, especially with respect to homework and the curriculum. While YouTube videos occupy an important place as a source of information for hobbies and school subjects, they have not prompted much collective engagement.