Why STEM Videos Are So Popular on YouTube

Cleo Abram went to Antarctica to discover the secrets lying beneath the ice. And she brought her millions of followers with her. The video journalist trekked down into the ice to show her “Huge, If True” audience a body of water that could contain living organisms, a discovery previously made by a team of Soviet scientists, and that had been sealed off from the rest of the world for 15 million years. The expedition became two videos, each less than 20 minutes long, packed with graphics, expert interviews and firsthand discoveries — the kind of highly produced science programming that once would have been at home on a network like National Geographic or Discovery. On YouTube, her videos garnered more than 6 million views each for her more than 12 million followers across platforms. Abram’s journey to Antarctica is emblematic of a much larger shift in how audiences consume science and educational content. YouTube, which helped make viral science experiments like the Diet Coke and Mentos geyser a cultural phenomenon in the platform’s early years, has evolved into a home for sophisticated STEM programming that can attract audiences in the tens of millions.…