#504: Speculating, Questioning, and Interpreting: A Mixed-Methods Study of Informal Learning on a Video-Sharing Social Media Platform

This study examines how informal learning unfolds on a video-sharing social media platform, focusing on interpretive discourse surrounding explanation videos of a music video. Introducing a mixed methods approach, we integrate computational techniques, including topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and regex-based categorization, with qualitative thematic analysis. This approach enables the examination of a large corpus of comments that would be impractical to analyze manually, carried out across three distinct analytic phases. Our findings reveal that users collaboratively construct meaning through questioning, interpreting, speculating, and debating, engaging in discourse that reflects critical, situated learning practices. These comment sections emerge as dynamic, participatory spaces where cultural interpretation and symbolic analysis are actively negotiated. In addition to these insights, the study presents a scalable, transferable method for analyzing large-scale user-generated discourse in informal, digitally mediated learning environments.