Edutainment aims to teach, “but it employs some of the strategies of entertainment in order to do so,” says Gordon Carlson, an associate professor in the communications studies department at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. On YouTube, edutainment is both a popular and wildly diverse genre, encompassing videos about the mathematics of cake cutting and what tattooing looks like in slow motion. A 2018 Pew survey of nearly 5,000 adults in the United States found that about 9 in 10 users of the site value it as a learning resource, while in a similar study, 60% of generation Z respondents preferred using YouTube to learn over books. Top YouTube channels like Raval’s receive the majority of these views—one 2018 estimate found that the top 3% of channels take in 85% of all views. … [Read more...] about The hidden hazards of YouTube’s fun, flashy educational videos
