Online Video as a Tool for Planning Education and Engagement: A Content Analysis of U.S. City Planning Departments’ YouTube Channels

Abstract

This study explores the potential for city planning departments to more deeply engage citizens in public planning processes by producing and sharing educational videos through such online platforms as YouTube. Many academic and professional fields have already recognized and adopted YouTube as a dynamic medium for education, however planning departments in the United States’ largest cities have yet to fully take advantage of this social media platform. This study uses content analysis to describe and categorize the digital video content published on seven city planning departments’ YouTube channels. In addition, this study illuminates relationships between video popularity—measured in number of views—and video length, production quality, production elements (e.g. voiceover, motion graphics or animation, background music, etc.), the degree of production effort (or cost) required on the part of the content creator, and the presence or absence of an explicit call to action.