Rebecca Yvonne Bayeck and Jinhee Choi of Pennsylvania State University recently did an interesting study examining how MOOC videos convey messages about culture and power through elements such as dress, setting, and character position. For instance, they found that educational videos from France and South Korea tend to focus on one person who is in professional attire and a formal pose. These elements covey a message of authority, and that the speaker is a fountain of knowledge that the students need to absorb. This, they claim, represents French and South Korean cultural attitudes of authority and power in education.
