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The purpose of this study is to analyze how and what kind of didactic techniques that are used in the audiovisual medium of YouTube. Nine different YouTube videos dealing with historical topics across four different YouTube channels has constituted the material for this study. Furthermore, four different dimensions, cognitive, aesthetic, moral and commercial will be analyzed according to how they interact with one another within the videos. Lastly the mode of presentation employed in the videos will also be analyzed among which there are three, explanatory, observatory, and participatory mode. The method that has been used to accomplish this is qualitative text analysis. As this study is not of a quantitative character a qualitative method is appropriate, and the videos have been analyzed similarly to how one would analyze a text with focus being put on the content and construction of the videos.

The result has shown that the use of a narrator, appropriate clothing and scenography, maps, animation, archive footage and other graphical tools are the main didactic techniques employed across the nine videos. Two others, slapstick comedy and suspenseful elements are used with the express purpose of conveying knowledge by only one of the four channels. The cognitive and aesthetic dimensions interact a lot with one another as each channel has a distinct aesthetic and all of them strive to convey knowledge to the viewer which in turn is supported by the aesthetic dimension. The moral dimension is present and often supported by the aesthetic one but compared to the previous two it takes more of a backseat role, appearing most often at the beginning or the end of the videos and is used to send moral messages or evoke feelings in the viewer. Commercial dimensions also play a role in creating the videos as two of the four channels uses explicit sponsorship bits in their videos, often connected to the topic of the video in some way, while the other two promotes their Patreon pages but does not use sponsors. All but one of the channels also have regular YouTube advertisements that play before their videos. Lastly the mode of presentation used is predominantly the explanatory one where a narrating voice is put over the footage on screen. The other two modes, the observatory and participatory modes are not used at all in any of the videos.