![]() ![]() ![]() Ten years later, the channel has 29,700 subscribers and almost 7.01 million views (as of August 17, 2020). The MPG launched its own YouTube channel in 2010. Geipel writes that “even assuming that some non-scientific contributions are omitted when all hits are viewed, these figures show the large presence of scientific content on YouTube” ( Geipel, 2018). In 2016, Geipel already counted 2,000 channels and 140,000 videos on YouTube assigned to the German search term “Wissenschaft” (we cannot present more recent figures because YouTube no longer displays the number of videos and channels for a search term). According to a study from 2019, it is now the main information medium for 93% of 18- to 19-years-olds in Germany ( Rat für Kulturelle Bildung, 2019).Įven beyond tutoring, the importance of YouTube for science communication is increasing, with science videos showing a wide variety of genres-from short documentaries to animations and reports ( Morcillo et al., 2016). Even though there is a great contrast between the video genres in terms of channels, uploads, and views, and a large majority of on average 85% of all views are accounted for by a small minority of 3% of all channels ( Bärtl, 2018), it should not be overlooked that YouTube has become very popular for educational videos and has established itself among students as an alternative learning platform that promotes on-demand learning. According to YouTube, 500 h of video were uploaded to the site every minute in 2019 ( Statista, 2020). Its success is the result of increased user interest in video content combined with increasingly high-quality offers: while the very first video uploaded to YouTube in 2005 was only 18 s long, the first educational videos were published just 2 years later. According to YouTube, two billion viewers all over the world are logged in monthly ( Statista, 2020). It is the world's largest video platform today and the second most visited site after Google worldwide ( Alexa, 2020). Against this background, the past two decades have seen the emergence of numerous new communication channels within the organization, where Max Planck scientists can present their research with professional support, ranging from our own website ( our own printed science magazine (MaxPlanckForschung) and various dialogue formats, including student labs, up to own channels on the popular social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.Īmong all these sites, YouTube occupies a special position. In the so-called “PUSH (Public Understanding of Science and Humanities) Memorandum” ( Stifterverband, 1999), the German non-university research organizations, including the MPG, committed themselves to actively and intensively promoting science communication in Germany by establishing new formats and channels and preparing the content professionally and in a target-group-specific manner. ![]() The Max Planck Society (MPG) is a publicly funded research organization. ![]() While the basic videos of the Max Planck Cinema series prove to be real long runners, which students regularly (year by year) search for and find on YouTube (Germany) as well as Google (Germany), thereby continuously generating views, it is currently not yet possible to estimate whether the “WISSEN WAS” videos, will still generate as high a number of views per day after several years. The evaluation also shows that high numbers of views do not necessarily go hand in hand with more subscriptions as other studies have previously assumed. Although the “WISSEN WAS” videos have been online for only a relatively short time, it can be seen that the videos produced with the influencers have significantly increased the number of subscriptions. The new “WISSEN WAS” video series focuses on current topics and their underlying scientific facts. Against this background, the Max Planck Society (MPG) in 2020 launched a video series in collaboration with two YouTube influencers. But these figures fall far short of the number of views of German YouTube influencers in the field of science, whose videos range from several 100,000 views to over a million. The videos generated sometimes well over 100,000 views (aggregated over several years). In recent years, we have published a video series called “Max Planck Cinema” to increase students' interest in complex scientific content. We wanted to increase the number of subscriptions to the Max Planck YouTube Channel with the help of influencers.
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