With a View to the Side: YouTube’s Sidebar and YouTuber’s Linguistic Style as Hints for Trust-Related Evaluations

ABSTRACT

Based on a heuristic approach to information processing, thematic reference of YouTube’s sidebars and YouTuber’s linguistic style are viewed as cues that should impact viewers’ evaluation of videos. In this study, a 2 × 2 online experiment was conducted wherein these factors were varied systematically for a video about nutrition myths. 147 participants assessed the credibility of information, YouTuber’s trustworthiness, and the self-reported learning gain. Results showed that a sidebar referring to similar (vs. unrelated) videos increased participants’ perceived trustworthiness of a YouTuber who used a YouTube-typical (vs. formal) language. Moreover, participants judged the learning gain to be higher when YouTube’s sidebar referred to similar videos. However, thematic reference of sidebar and linguistic style did not impact participants’ credibility judgments. Since people seem to recognize YouTube’s sidebars when evaluating videos, YouTube’s recommendation criteria might not only mediate videos, but also influence people’s judgments of YouTubers and videos.

Acknowledgments

We thank Inja Vetter for her help in implementing the experimental setting, data collection, and processing. We thank Friederike Hendriks for acting the YouTuber and we thank Jens Riehemann for his help in recording the YouTube video. We thank Celeste Brennecka for language editing.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the Research Training Group 172/2: Trust and Communication in a Digitized World.

Notes on contributors

Maria Zimmermann

Maria Zimmermann is a scholar at the Institute for Psychology in Education at the University of Münster, Germany. She was a member of the DFG-Research Training Group 1712/2: ‘Trust and Communication in a Digitized World.’ Her research interests lie in how trust in experts and information is established online.

Regina Jucks

Regina Jucks is a full professor at the Institute for Psychology in Education at the University of Münster, Germany. Since 2011, she heads the local center for teaching in higher education. Her research fields address various settings of instructional and digitized communication ranging from doctor–patient interaction to higher education.