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Views ranged from nearly 1,400 to just under 100,
demonstrating that all SCI life skills may not all be
of uniform interest. The video demonstrating the
more basic life skill of transferring from wheelchair
to bed and bed mobility was by far the most
engaging of any of the HtVs. It captured nearly 400
more views than the next most popular video, one
that showed how to transfer from wheelchair to
floor.
In fact, since its publication in September 2009,
the wheelchair-to-bed transfer and bed mobility
video has demonstrated a constant rate of daily
access as reported for November 10, 2013, which
was 55 views. More investigation is needed, but the
relative popularity of a very basic life skill
(transferring from wheelchair to bed) versus an
unusual and “edgy” life skill (going down the
escalator in a wheelchair) suggests that most HtV
viewers are persons with SCI, persons with other
mobility disabilities, or family and friends. We
hypothesize that a person without a disability who
accesses HtVs out of curiosity would be more drawn
to dramatic and unusual skills demonstrations, such
as riding an escalator in a wheelchair. Comments
posted and subscription requests further suggest that
most of the viewers of HtVs were persons with SCI,
family, or friends. Most HtVs focused on SCI life
skills were “discovered” on YouTube by referral
from related videos. In October and November 2013,
seventy-four percent of the persons who engaged the
wheelchair-to-bed HtV found it through a related
YouTube referral.
This number is significant when we realize that
referral from other videos is not the only way
persons connect with one another in the YouTube
community. We associated key words
with this popular video: “wheelchair,” “SCI,” “bed
mobility,” “transfer,” “peer mentor,” “spinal cord
injury,” “NRH,” and “disability awareness.” Only a
small minority (11.6%) of viewers arrived at the
wheelchair-to-bed video by searching one of these
key words inside of YouTube. An even smaller
number (0.5%) found the HtV from the Google
search engine outside of YouTube. Rather it was
YouTube’s own “interest engine” that connected
interested people with our demonstration of
wheelchair-to-bed transfer. YouTube utilities
“observe” users’ patterns of interest and viewing and
suggest other community resources. Most viewers,
therefore connected with the wheelchair-to-bed HtV
without explicitly knowing that they wanted to.
Long-term viewing patterns were sinusoidal,
suggesting that viewers alerted one another to the
videos’ existence. Viewing accelerated and then
dropped; subsequently, the pattern repeated. HtVs
dealing with the RRTC themes of diet and skin
management skills (ie, the videos on how to cook
from a wheelchair and how to do pressure reliefs in
a wheelchair) appear to have about the same number
of referrals from related videos as does the most
popular wheelchair-to-bed transfer video. In fact,
every referral to the RRTC-themed videos, without
exception, was made from our popular wheelchair-
to-bed HtV. The power of referral in connecting
people with SCI with information that they may not
initially find engaging is a topic for continued
investigation.
Among the data returned by the YouTube web
statistics utility, Analytics, was the geographic
location of view requests. In the lifetime statistics of
the channel, viewers were located largely in the
United States (31.4%), but a significant number of
views originated in Europe, especially in Germany
(11.5%), and in South America and Asia. The appeal
of HtVs, narrated in English, to persons who likely
are not native speakers suggests the utility of video
demonstration of skills.
According to a survey conducted by the Pew
Internet & American Life Project, 91% of
Americans own a handheld device (cell phone, smart
phone), Of individuals who own mobile devices,
40% have used it to access social networking on-line
(Duggan, 2013; Brenner, 2013). As use of the
mobile Web grows, persons with disabilities are
likely to be a percentage of those users. During
October and November of 2013, YouTube
documented a median value of 16.1% of HtV views
as originating from mobile phones, while 11.0%
originated from tablets. This is a four-fold
percentage increase in mobile device viewing since
2010. One video theme, however, represented by
“How to do One Arm Cable Bicep Row/Curl with a
Cable Machine” garnered a remarkable 30% of its
views from persons believed to be using mobile
devices. This unusual rate of mobile access coupled
with the mobile theme of the HtV suggests persons
who accessed this video from their handhelds may
have been looking for real-time support in solving
problems they were encountering while exercising at
the gym. Alternatively, they may have specifically
invoked the HtV from a mobile device to use it as a
reference while practicing the skills it demonstrated
at the gym.
2.2.5 Discussion: Persons with Disability
Interests in Social Media
Each of the 3 phases of study described in this
article create a tentative profile of SCI interests as
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Disability
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