Computer Science
#Stayhome #withme: How do youtubers help with covid-19 loneliness?
Document Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Loneliness threatens public mental wellbeing during COVID-19. In response, YouTube creators participated in the #StayHome #WithMe movement (SHWM) and made myriad videos for people experiencing loneliness or boredom at home. User-shared videos generate parasocial attachment and virtual connectedness. However, there is limited knowledge of how creators contributed videos during disasters to provide social provisions as disaster-relief. Grounded on Weiss's loneliness theory, this work analyzed 1488 SHWM videos to examine video sharing as a pathway to social provisions. Findings suggested that skill and knowledge sharing, entertaining arts, homelife activities, live chatting, and gameplay were the most popular video styles. YouTubers utilized parasocial relationships to form a space for staying away from the disaster. SHWM YouTubers provided friend-like, mentor-like, and family-like provisions through videos in diferent styles. Family-like provisions led to the highest overall viewer engagement. Based on the fndings, design implications for supporting viewers' mental wellbeing in disasters are discussed.
Publication Title
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Publication Date
2021
ISBN
9781450380966
DOI
10.1145/3411764.3445397
Keywords
COVID-19, loneliness, parasocial, social provisions, YouTube, video sharing
Repository Citation
Niu, Shuo and Bartolome, Ava, "#Stayhome #withme: How do youtubers help with covid-19 loneliness?" (2021). Computer Science. 164.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_computer_sciences/164
APA Citation
Niu, S., Bartolome, A., Mai, C., & Ha, N. B. (2021, May). # StayHome# WithMe: how do YouTubers help with COVID-19 loneliness?. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-15).