10 Video Networks of Sustainable Design: The Doughnut Perspective
137
RQ1. Which types of design are shown in YouTube videos classified according
to Doughnut Economics indicators?
RQ2. Which are the characteristics of relevant video hubs across Doughnut
Economics indicators?
RQ3. Which contextual factors are tied to such content and communication
patterns?
10.2 Methods
10.2.1 Data Collection and Classification
We employed data previously analyzed by the authors in (Vargas Meza and Yamanaka
2017; Vargas Meza 2019), where an extensive description of our methods is included.
Because the original intention was to explore the role of academia in diffusion of
sustainable design, keywords included “university” and “lecture”. Data on YouTube
videos in English and Spanish related to sustainable design was collected in 2015
with YouTube Data Tools (Rieder 2015). Videos were watched to discard unrelated
content and to classify them on several categories, including contextual factors like
type of uploader, type of speaker, uploading date, YouTube channel’s country and
type of design.
Given the unequal economic and communication structural power, former analysis
mostly highlighted countries like US and UK in the English sample, and Spain and
Colombia in the Spanish sample. However, their social and environmental issues are
different from those in other countries with equal or larger number of netizens. Therefore, the present study also classified the videos according to Doughnut Economics
indicators (O’ Neill et al. 2018) of their countries of origin, which are based in
measurements revised in the literature review section and in Raworth’s proposals.
It should be noted that so far, no nation on Earth counts with thriving economy,
society and living systems at the same time. Nevertheless, groups of countries were
considered according to their biological and social indicators. A high average in
biological indicators means that the nation is trespassing planetary boundaries, while
a high average in social indicators means human well-being.
Therefore, if the biological indicators average was moderately low and the social
one was moderately high (0.52–3.33 and 0.70–1.13 respectively), countries were
classified as Bio Socially Compromised (BSC). If both averages were low (0.18–
1.99 and 0.29–0.89 respectively), countries were classified as Socially Compromised
(SC). Finally, if both averages were high (2.08–7.98 and 0.91–1.20 respectively),
countries were classified as Biologically Compromised (BC). It should be noted that
most countries (40) detected in the YouTube video samples fell in the BC category,
followed by 27 SC countries and 13 BSC countries.
To answer RQ1, statistical tests for comparison of categorical and numerical
data were computed with R (Team 2013). For RQ2 basic social network metrics
were calculated and graphs visualized with Gephi (Bastian et al. 2009), in order to
137
RQ1. Which types of design are shown in YouTube videos classified according
to Doughnut Economics indicators?
RQ2. Which are the characteristics of relevant video hubs across Doughnut
Economics indicators?
RQ3. Which contextual factors are tied to such content and communication
patterns?
10.2 Methods
10.2.1 Data Collection and Classification
We employed data previously analyzed by the authors in (Vargas Meza and Yamanaka
2017; Vargas Meza 2019), where an extensive description of our methods is included.
Because the original intention was to explore the role of academia in diffusion of
sustainable design, keywords included “university” and “lecture”. Data on YouTube
videos in English and Spanish related to sustainable design was collected in 2015
with YouTube Data Tools (Rieder 2015). Videos were watched to discard unrelated
content and to classify them on several categories, including contextual factors like
type of uploader, type of speaker, uploading date, YouTube channel’s country and
type of design.
Given the unequal economic and communication structural power, former analysis
mostly highlighted countries like US and UK in the English sample, and Spain and
Colombia in the Spanish sample. However, their social and environmental issues are
different from those in other countries with equal or larger number of netizens. Therefore, the present study also classified the videos according to Doughnut Economics
indicators (O’ Neill et al. 2018) of their countries of origin, which are based in
measurements revised in the literature review section and in Raworth’s proposals.
It should be noted that so far, no nation on Earth counts with thriving economy,
society and living systems at the same time. Nevertheless, groups of countries were
considered according to their biological and social indicators. A high average in
biological indicators means that the nation is trespassing planetary boundaries, while
a high average in social indicators means human well-being.
Therefore, if the biological indicators average was moderately low and the social
one was moderately high (0.52–3.33 and 0.70–1.13 respectively), countries were
classified as Bio Socially Compromised (BSC). If both averages were low (0.18–
1.99 and 0.29–0.89 respectively), countries were classified as Socially Compromised
(SC). Finally, if both averages were high (2.08–7.98 and 0.91–1.20 respectively),
countries were classified as Biologically Compromised (BC). It should be noted that
most countries (40) detected in the YouTube video samples fell in the BC category,
followed by 27 SC countries and 13 BSC countries.
To answer RQ1, statistical tests for comparison of categorical and numerical
data were computed with R (Team 2013). For RQ2 basic social network metrics
were calculated and graphs visualized with Gephi (Bastian et al. 2009), in order to