#StayHome #WithMe: How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness?
AAccepted Manuscript
Shuo NiuAva Bartolome ∗ Cat Mai ∗ Nguyen B. Ha ∗ {shniu,abartolome,cmai,joha}@clarku.eduClark UniversityWorcester, MA, USA ABSTRACT
Loneliness threatens public mental wellbeing during COVID-19. Inresponse, YouTube creators participated in the
CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collab-orative and social computing . KEYWORDS
YouTube, video sharing, parasocial, social provisions, disaster, lone-liness
ACM Reference Format:
Shuo Niu, Ava Bartolome, Cat Mai, and Nguyen B. Ha. 2021.
CHIConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13,2021, Yokohama, Japan.
ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445397 ∗ Student authors contributed equally to this research.Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than theauthor(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, orrepublish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permissionand/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].
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In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe and forced billionsof people to stay home for months. Social media became an alter-native venue for people to stay connected and cope with lonelinessduring this global crisis. Loneliness is a significant public mental-health issue during COVID-19 [22, 45]. YouTube, as the largestvideo sharing platform, called on YouTube creators (YouTubers)to join the content that will entertain, inform, and connect with people whoare social distancing during this pandemic ” . This hashtag move-ment attracted a lot of video artists and creators, which witnesseda 600% increase in viewership . There is increasing attention inthe literature on using social media to support public safety andwellbeing during disasters [27]. In HCI, researchers have exploredthe affordances of Twitter [61], Facebook [5, 11], and Reddit [23] insupporting disaster awareness and communication. However, thereis limited understanding of how YouTubers and video-sharing plat-forms can uniquely support public mental health during a long-termcrisis. https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/stay_home_with_me.pdf a r X i v : . [ c s . H C ] J a n ccepted Manuscript CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha effort to supplement social connections through parasocial rela-tionships. However, there is limited understanding of YouTubers’roles and YouTube’s affordances in offering social connections andmitigating disaster loneliness. Considering YouTube’s massive cre-ator base and high popularity among young people [47], the HCIcommunity needs to address this knowledge gap to better designapplications and services to support disaster mental health. Thiswork explores this new social media phenomenon by collectingand analyzing SHWM video data. Grounded on Weiss’s lonelinesstheory, this work examines what loneliness-supporting videos werecreated, how they sought to offer social provisions, and whether dif-ferent social provisions affected viewer engagement. An overviewof SHWM can provide new perspectives on YouTube’s roles in dis-asters and inform social media platforms’ socio-technical designfor tackling loneliness.8023 SHWM videos published between March 11th and May 15thwere crawled from YouTube Data API, among which 1642 made bycreators in the United States were annotated by Amazon MechanicalTurk (MTurk) participants. These videos came from 695 video mak-ers and attracted 206,319,247 views. The analysis of SHWM videoswas guided by Weiss’s framework of social-emotional loneliness[54]. Weiss’s theory conceptualizes six core types of social provi-sions that people need to refrain loneliness (Table 1) – attachment , social integration , reassurance of worth , reliable alliance , guidance ,and opportunity for nurturance . Weiss’ model incorporates the majorelements of social relationships people need from families, friends,and mentors [14], which are also the connections that are likely tobe absent during social distancing. YouTubers approach viewersby sharing original content and arousing viewers to parasociallyinteract. Viewers might generate feelings of connection and inti-macy to the creators [39, 50] and interact with YouTubers throughliking and commenting. Examining the styles of SHWM videos andanalyzing what social provisions the videos sought to offer willdeepen the understanding of YouTube’s social functionalities indisasters and the categories of virtual connectedness provided byYouTubers. Grounded on Weiss’s framework, this paper addressesthree key research questions: • RQ1. What • RQ2. How did • RQ3. How did videos with different social provisions affectviewer engagement?RQ1 is an initial exploration of SHWM video styles and if YouTuberschose to communicate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Rootedin Weiss’s loneliness theory, RQ2 explores whether and how thesix social provisions were associated with videos in different stylesand different COVID-19 mentioning. Following the understandingof video styles and social provisions, RQ3 further explores whetheroffering various social provisions affected video popularity, viewers’activeness, and viewers’ emotional expression in the comments.These metrics reflect the parasocial interactions with YouTubers.The authors found that SHWM videos primarily themed in: how-tovideos of sharing skills and knowledge; entertaining content of music, arts, and performance; videos of homelife activities; chat-ting with the audience; and videos of gameplay. In contrast toother social media platforms where disaster information is inten-sively communicated and spread, these videos formed an onlinespace where the disaster is not actively mentioned. The analysisof six social provisions in SHWM explained how parasocial re-lationships supplement social connections to mitigate loneliness.Most SHWM videos offered social integration by sharing interestsand recreational activities. A large number of how-to videos pri-marily supported the guidance provision. Videos of homelife andchatting supported the provisions of attachment, nurturance, andalliance. Providing family-like social provisions had better overallviewer engagement with the video, despite their smaller propor-tions in SHWM. This work’s findings foster new possibilities todesign video-sharing-based applications and technologies to ad-dress disaster-related loneliness.
Much research has explored the use of different social media dur-ing disasters. Houston et al. reviewed prior works and concludedkey affordances of social media include signaling and detectingdisasters, sending and receiving requests for help, informing con-ditions, providing mental/behavioral support, etc. [27]. Lindsaysummarized that social media such as Twitter and Facebook areprimarily used to disseminate and receive disaster information andserve as an emergency management tool [37]. Studies examinedthe unique affordances of different social media in emergenciesand disasters. For example, Twitter is a platform for sharing shortand immediate disaster messages to raise public awareness of thecritical situation [42, 61]. Facebook users seek official informationand organize disaster-supporting communities [5, 11, 55, 56]. Red-dit users perceive and speculate risks in the long run, or differentregions [23]. YouTube videos educate the public as well as spreadmisinformation [4, 44]. Disasters are stressful events and can causemental health problems for both people who are directly affectedand the community at large [53]. Besides spreading disaster in-formation, social media is also an outlet for expressing emotions[32, 49] and receiving mental health service [27]. Therefore studieshave looked into technologies to measure public mental healthby mining social media data [3, 15, 32]. Recent studies suggestedthat COVID social distancing caused loneliness and other mentalhealth challenges to many who stayed at home [36, 45], especiallythe young adults [16, 22]. However, the use of video-sharing forsupporting mental health during disasters is under-explored [47].There is limited understanding of how video creators contributeto a social media movement like
In HCI and CSCW, understanding the unique characteristics andcommunication affordances of different platforms centers the re-search on social media [48, 57]. After years of growth, video-sharingplatforms like YouTube have developed their characteristics of plat-form cultures. Dijck noted that on YouTube, user-generated videos ccepted Manuscript
How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan boost online production and distribute diverse content [59]. Incontrast to platforms based on friending and networking, socialinteractions on YouTube rely on the video itself rather than of-fline relationships [7]. YouTubers interact with viewers throughsharing new videos to cultivate relationships with fans [26, 28].Horton and Wohl defined the one-sided intimacy generated bythe “conversational give-and-take” with performers as parasocialrelationship [25]. Video interactions that lead to parasocial relation-ships are called parasocial interactions [24, 25]. Gardner found thatpeople turn to parasocial relationships with a media figure whenthey need to regulate the needs of social belongingness [19]. Hart-mann concluded that parasocial relationships could provide socialsupport and shield against the effects of exclusion and loneliness[24]. Rotman et al. suggested YouTube users mostly focused onthe parasocial interactions with the creator, rather than building afriend and community network like other social media [52]. Wohnexamined live streamers and found parasocial relationships corre-late with viewers’ emotional, instrumental, and financial supportfor the performers [65]. Anjani et al. studied YouTube food-eatingvideos and suggested that they generate a sense of connectedness[2]. The parasocial interactions on YouTube lie in that YouTubersmake original content to engage viewers, and viewers respond toand endorse YouTubers by video-watching, liking, and comment-ing [7, 26, 28, 33].
Loneliness is prevalent among people who experienced disastersand crises [30, 38, 45]. During COVID-19, technologies play a vi-tal role in offering social support and helping people deal withloneliness and isolation [36]. This work utilizes Weiss’s theory ofloneliness [64] to examine the role of SHWM videos in offeringsocial provisions during COVID-19. Weiss conceptualized socialand emotional loneliness and argued that people need six socialprovisions to deal with loneliness [54]; see Table 1 for definitions,which are elaborated in section 3.2. Cutrona and Russell examinedWeiss’s loneliness theory in psychological practice and identifiedthe sources of social provisions[14]. Attachment, reliable alliance,and opportunity for nurturance demonstrate intimacy or trust andare usually provided by family members [14]. Social integrationis usually obtained from friend relationships [14]. Guidance is ob-tained from teachers, mentors, or parent figures [14]. Reassuranceof worth is a type of self-efficacy and self-esteem obtained by help-ing others and receiving acknowledgment [14].Weiss’s loneliness framework has been used to study the socialconnections people can obtain from social media. The six social
Table 1: Weiss’s Framework of Social Provisions for Lone-liness
Concept Definition Sourceattachment A relationship in which people receivesa sense of safety and security familysocialintegration A network of relationships in which in-dividuals share interests, concerns, andrecreational activities friendreassuranceof worth A relationships in which the person’sskills and abilities are acknowledged selfreliable alliance A relationship in which one can counton assistance under any circumstances familyguidance A relationship with trustworthy and au-thoritative individuals who can provideadvice and assistance mentoropportunityfor nurturance A relationship in which the person feelsresponsible for the wellbeing of another family provisions were examined in the loneliness-support functions ofTwitter [21] and Facebook [62]. It was also used as a framework tostudy how parasocial relationships affect loneliness [29, 63]. Weiss’sframework described the necessary relationships people need inthe context of loneliness [14], which are also the social supportsthat are likely to be absent during social distancing. YouTubersperform various kinds of affective relationships and serve as micro-celebrities to offer accessibility, authenticity, and connectedness tothe audience [39, 51]. Viewers experience YouTubers’ characters asclose friends or online family members to fulfill the need for socialinteraction [33, 50]. The parasocial relationships can be a sourceof social connections for people who need to improve emotional,cognitive, and behavioral health [17]. By examining Weiss’s sixprovisions in SHWM videos, this work offers an overview of howYouTubers construct the parasocial relationships to supplementsocial provisions during social distancing. This understanding isessential to guide future research on viewers’ perception of socialrelationships with YouTubers and the psychological and affectiveaffordances of YouTube in reducing disaster loneliness.During COVID-19, viewers may choose to watch SHWM videosto obtain insufficient social provisions in real life to avoid loneliness[20]. This work uses engagement metrics to measure the viewers’participation in parasocial interactions. Prior studies suggestedthat participating in parasocial interactions can promote socialconnectedness and mitigate loneliness [19, 24]. Khan noted thatviewers who want to socialize on YouTube were more likely tolike/dislike and comment on the videos [33]. Rasmussen found thatviewer interactions such as commenting and sending messages tothe YouTubers can simulate realistic social interactions [50]. Wrightet al. noticed that video-based platforms outperformed message-based media in promoting mental wellbeing [66]. Similarly, on othersocial media, commenting and liking others’ social media posts arepositive indicators of mental wellbeing [46, 60]. Studies showedthat discussing common interests on social media helped userscope with loneliness [18] and promoted comfort feelings [43]. Thisanalysis provides a preliminary understanding of how six socialprovisions affect engagement in parasocial interactions. ccepted Manuscript
CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha
Grounded in prior research, this work uses SHWM as a lens to exam-ine the social affordances of YouTube and YouTuber communitiesin supporting social connections and mitigating disaster loneliness.Based on Weiss’s framework, the three research questions examinehow SHWM videos provide social provisions and whether theyaffect viewer engagement. This section describes the structure ofthe study and the factors examined in the data analysis (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The analysis framework of the three research ques-tions
Research on social media interaction needs to capture user be-haviors and participation styles [31]. Addressing RQ1 provides anoverview of how SHWM YouTubers crafted parasocial relationshipsfor viewers who need to avoid or mitigate loneliness. Consideringthe diversity of
Following the categorization of SHWM videos, RQ2 measures whe-ther and how SHWM videos provided different social provisions.This work adopts Weiss’s loneliness theory as the theoretical frame-work. Weiss’s theory depicts the categories of roles YouTubers canplay via parasocial relationships in providing needed social pro-visions during social distancing. In Weiss’s theory, attachment isa social provision for a sense of safety and security. In SHWM,creators may give the viewers a sense of emotional security andcloseness by showing intimate content such as activities at home or a face-to-face chat.
Social integration is a provision to share in-terests and concerns. By sharing videos of hobbies and interests,YouTubers can entertain the viewers and provide social integra-tion.
Reassurance of worth emphasizes one’s skills and abilitiesare acknowledged. YouTube has a culture of developing video cre-ation skills and growing the subscriber community [7]. By sharingSHWM videos, YouTubers demonstrate their unique talents andbe acknowledged by the viewers and gain reassurance.
Reliablealliance is a provision which the person can count on under anycircumstances. To help people who are staying at home, YouTubersmay express a willingness to help at any time.
Guidance is a provi-sion through which people obtain directions and advice. YouTube isknown for communities for skill sharing and learning [10]. SHWMvideos can provide instructions, guidelines, or advice during thepandemic.
Opportunity for nurturance is a provision in which theperson feels responsible for another’s wellbeing. During COVID-19, YouTubers may communicate with their viewers to show theirconcern for their health and wellbeing.The annotation of social provisions in SHWM videos was throughcrowd-sourcing on Mechanical Turk . The six social provisions ofSHWM videos were rated by participants who watched SHWMvideos. The annotation generated six binary variables for each videoto represent whether the video provides each of the six social provi-sions. Logistic regression models were built with the video style andCOVID-mentioning as independent variables and the six social pro-vision variables as dependent factors. The predictive models revealhow videos in different styles and mentioning COVID-19 in differ-ent degrees affect the video’s social provisions. How different videostyles mention COVID-19 was also compared by the Wilcoxon test(posthoc uses Dunn’s test with Bonferroni adjustment). Parasocial relationships could help people shield against loneliness[19, 20, 24]. Interacting with the videos can simulate more realisticsocial connections to the YouTubers [50]. Video watching, liking,and commenting reflect viewers’ participation in the parasocialinteractions on YouTube, which may mitigate the effects of loneli-ness [24, 33]. Interactions such as commenting and liking on othersocial media are also considered positive indicators of mental well-being [46, 60]. RQ1 and RQ2 explore what videos were created forSHWM and how they offered social provisions for people in socialdistancing. RQ3 seeks to capture each social provision’s effectson the interactions with SHWM videos and their potential effectson loneliness by measuring viewer engagement metrics. User en-gagement in online services is defined as “the quality of the userexperience” that motivates people to interact [35]. Lehmann et al.identified popularity , activity , and loyalty as three key metrics tomeasure users’ engagement [35]. On YouTube, these measurementsindicate viewers’ participation and behaviors in the parasocial in-teractions to fulfill the need for social interaction [33]. A video’spopularity can be reflected by the number of views, likes, and com-ments it received. Popularity measurements reflect if providing asocial provision allowed the YouTubers to reach and support moreviewers. Activity is the average viewer’s activeness in the interac-tion with the video and the YouTuber. The frequencies of likes and ccepted Manuscript How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan comments a video received per 100 views were collected to measurethis dimension. Activity measurements indicate viewers’ activenessin the parasocial interactions. Loyalty metrics are how often theusers return to the social media site. Since it is difficult to collectviewers’ watching history from YouTube, this work leveraged usercomments’ sentiment as an alternative factor of loyalty. NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon [40] was used to count emotionalwords in viewer comments. Comment emotions evaluate viewers’emotional connection to the YouTuber’s content. Although viewerengagement metrics do not directly measure how much lonelinessSHWM videos can mitigate, they reflect the degree to which view-ers were attracted by the videos and willing to participate in thesocial interactions on YouTube [33]. Ordinary least squares models(OLS) were built to measure whether videos with different socialprovisions resulted in different viewer engagement. The model usedthe six provision variables (dummy variables) to predict popular-ity, activity, and comment emotion measurements. However, it iswidely recognized that the number of followers a creator has is adecisive factor for their content popularity [6, 9]. Viewer engage-ment is significantly correlated with subscriber count. Thereforethe multivariate models included subscriber count to investigatewhether the six social provisions added an extra layer of effects onviewer engagement besides creators’ popularity.
The SHWM video data was collected with YouTube Data API between Jun 3 and Jun 5, 2020. The data crawling included videoswith publishing dates between Mar 11 (the declaration of stateemergency) and May 15 (the first round of reopening in most U.S.states). The authors chose to collect the data at least 20 days afterthe video was published because it left enough time for the newervideos to get views [9]. Videos published in countries other than theU.S. were not considered because of different COVID-19 quarantinetime-frame and difficulties in analyzing non-English videos. Thekeyword “ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 = . 𝑆𝐷 = . Grounded theory approach [8] was applied to identify video styles.In the open coding stage, one author watched 100 randomly selectedSHWM videos and generated 100 notes. The author specificallyinspected what activities were done and the videos’ production style https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3 (e.g., livestream, animation, photos/memes). For example, in a videoof “cooking with me”, the author noted “a video to teach cooking, thecreator talked about cooking steps, and the video shared the cookinghobby”. After that, the notes were summarized into emerging videostyles through affinity diagramming. Open encoding generated ninevideo styles. A discriminant analysis was conducted through closed-encoding to validate the video styles’ accuracy in representingSHWM videos. Four authors used the nine styles to tag another 300videos, with each video tagged by two authors. Tagging results werethen compared to identify discrepancies. When an inconsistencywas identified, revisions to the style definitions were made. Afterthe discussion, the authors finalized a reliable categorization of ninevideo styles for crowd-sourcing annotation. Researchers reached asubstantial agreement on the video styles during the discriminantanalysis ( 𝐹𝑙𝑒𝑖𝑠𝑠 ′ 𝑘𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑎 = . 𝑝 < . Table 2: Nine video styles identified from the grounded the-ory analysis.
Style Description artistic
A video of music, art (drawing/painting/carving/etc.), performance,or animation challenge
A video showing exciting activities or participating in a uniquechallenge to grab attention (e.g. stunts, self-challenges) chatting
A video or livestream checking in with or interacting with the au-dience (e.g. chatting, reading viewer comments, or doing activities) game
A gameplay or a recorded livestream game video homelife
A video or vlog showing family, homelife, or lifestyle how-to
A how-to video or knowledge video that gives step-by-step guide-lines to complete a task or explains a specific subject to the audience(e.g. cooking, learn language, safety tips) religious
A religious video showing prayers or praying review
A video reviewing or recommending products or services story
A video sharing an interesting story, pictures (i.e. photos, memes),or video clip(s)
782 participants from MTurk were recruited to complete the annota-tion task. All participants were from the U.S. and have completed atleast 5000 tasks with an accuracy of 97% or higher. Each participantwas asked to watch a video for at least three minutes. The taskconsists of three questions that annotate video styles, COVID-19mentioning levels, and whether it provides each of the six socialprovisions, plus one quality check question to estimate if the par-ticipants watched the video carefully. Q1 asked the participantsto pick one of the nine video styles (or “none of the above”) thatbest describes the video content (Table 2). Q2 was a quality-controlquestion that asked the participants to select the YouTube videocategory from three randomly generated options. Q3 asked the par-ticipants to pick all applied social provisions, with an extra choiceof “none of the above.” The provision descriptions were rephrasedfor easy understanding (see Table 3 for Q3 options). Participantswere asked to rate the video by considering someone who regularlyviews this kind of video. Q4 was a question to annotate the degreeto which the video mentions COVID-19, coronavirus, or pandemicby selecting one of “none”, “low”, “medium”, and “high”. Partici-pants were asked to rate based on their perception of whether the ccepted Manuscript
CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha (a) True Colors - Piano Covers & Chill
Figure 2: Example videos in 9 video styles: (a) artistic, (b)challenge, (c) chatting, (d) game, (e) homelife, (f) how-to, (g)religious, (h) review, and (i) story. video discussed COVID-19. No participants tagged more than 1/10of all 1642 videos. To ensure the validity of the data annotation, theauthors filtered out and republished tasks that either not watchedenough time as required, with unanswered questions, with con-flicting answers (e.g. “none of above” and one above option arechecked at the same time), or with apparently wrong answers forQ2. The task was performed in two rounds to ensure agreementon the choices. In the first round, each video was tagged by threedifferent participants. A task was considered to reach an agreementif at least two participants picked the same video style or “noneof the above”. If a video has three different style answers, it wastagged by two additional participants. Then the video style was de-termined by the one that was selected by three participants. Videos without agreement were also identified. The average rating of Q4was used as the value of COVID-19 mentioning (0 for “none” and 3for “high”). The variables for six provisions were set to 1 if morethan half of the participants picked that provision in Q3; otherwise,they were set to 0. The agreed results of Q1, Q3, and Q4 were savedas variable values to perform multivariate analysis (see Table 4).
Table 3: Annotations of social provisions in Q3
SocialProvisions Provision Codingattachment The video creator gives a sense of emotional security andcloseness to the audience.integration The video creator shares common or specialized hobbies andinterests, or shares entertaining content, activities, or experi-ences with the audience.reassurance The video creator demonstrates special skills and abilities inhopes to be acknowledged, or acknowledges the audience’sthoughts and comments.alliance The video creator expresses a willingness to help anytime,i.e. being available to help with the audience’s problems ordifficulties.guidance The video creator gives step-by-step instructions, guidelines,or advice on a subject that they are knowledgeable in.nurturance The video creator feels responsible for and interested in theaudience’s wellbeing.
This work considers three aspects of viewer engagement to probehow SHWM viewers parasocially interact with YouTubers: popular-ity, activity, and comment emotion [35]. The number of views, likes,and comments constitute the measurements of popularity. Viewcount ( 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 ), like count ( 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 ), and comment count ( 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ) arecommon measurements to assess to what degree the video reachedviewers [9]. Activity is measured by how many likes and commentsa video got for every 100 views – like rate ( 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 ) and commentrate ( 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 ). The like rate is the difference between likeand dislike count per 100 video views, calculated using Eq. 1. Thecomment rate is the number of comments a video received per100 video views (Eq. 2). Those two factors reflect the activeness ofparasocial interactions with the YouTubers. To measure commentemotions, emotional words in NRC Word-Emotion AssociationLexicon [40] was used to count how many positive and negativeemotional words were used in the viewer comments. Positive (ornegative) emotion score of a comment is calculated by the totalnumber of positive (or negative) words in the collected commentsdivided by the number of counted comments ( 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 and 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 , Eq. 3) [67]. The frequencies of positive and nega-tive words in comments reflect whether viewers express favorableor unfavorable sentiment towards the video, which implies thepositivity of parasocial interactions with the YouTuber. 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 = 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 − 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 _ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 ∗
100 (1) 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 = 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 _ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 ∗
100 (2) 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖 ( 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎 ) 𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 = 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 _ 𝑜 𝑓 _ 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖 ( 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎 ) 𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 _ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 _ 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 (3) ccepted Manuscript How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan
Table 4: The measured factors and their respective variables used in the data analysis
Factor Variable DefinitionVideoCreation Video style 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒
The video style in Table 2 that picked by more than half of the partici-pants in Q1.COVID-19 Mentioning 𝑐𝑜𝑣
Average rating of COVID-mentioning in Q4SocialProvisions Attachment 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡
Value is set to 1 if more than half of the participantschecked the provision in Q3, otherwise 0.Social Integration 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
Reassurance of worth 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
Reliable alliance 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
Guidance 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
Opportunity for nurturance 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
Popularity View count 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤
Number of times the video has beenwatched/liked/commentedComment count 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡
Like count 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒
Activity Like rate 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 Likes/comments a video received per 100 viewsComment rate 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 CommentEmotion Positive emotion 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 The frequency of positive/negative emotional words inthe commentsNegative emotion 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 The participants spent an average of 5.42 minutes on the task ( 𝑆𝐷 = . 𝑝 < . 𝐹𝑙𝑒𝑖𝑠𝑠 ′ 𝑘𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑎 = . 𝑝 < . homelife , but someparticipants may be interested in how the YouTubers did it andtagged it as a how-to . But annotating the video by the majority ruleallowed the authors to decide the closest style to describe the video. RQ1 probes what SHWM videos were created and how they relateto the pandemic. The analysis consists of an initial comparisonwith the overall YouTube video category distribution [12] and agrounded-theory encoding of SHWM videos. The degree to whicheach video mentions the pandemic is also rated to explore whetherSHWM videos were made for sharing COVID-19 information.
The comparison re-vealed that in contrast to the distribution in [12] (overall videocategory distribution in 2015), SHWM had more videos in “En-tertainment”, “Howto & Style”, “People & Blogs”, and “Education”(Figure 3). There were 20.36% “Howto & Style” videos and 12.63%“Education” videos in SHWM, in contrast to their 5.1% and 2.9% overall proportions. There were 22.38% and 16.87% in the categoriesof “Entertainment” and “People & Blogs”, higher than the 16.0% and8.1% in the overall distribution. This result indicates that during theCOVID-19 quarantine, YouTubers used how-to , artistic , homelife , chatting , and game were the five most commonvideo styles (Figure 4). The style distribution suggests that themost common ways for YouTubers to build parasocial relationshipsand help with loneliness were showing step-oriented and knowl-edge building videos, making entertaining videos by demonstratingartistic or gaming skills, and showing a video of home activities orchatting to the audience (See Table 5 for example videos). M u s i c E n t e r t a i n m e n t G a m i n g P e o p l e & B l o g s Sp o r t s C o m e d y F il m & A n i m a t i o n H o w t o & S t y l e N e w s & P o li t i c s C a r s & V e h i c l e s S c i e n c e & T e c hn o l o g y E d u c a t i o n T r a v e l E v e n t s P e t s & A n i m a l s P e r c e n t a g e ( % ) All YouTube videos posted in 2015SHWM posted from Mar 11 - May 15, 2020
Figure 3: Comparison of category distributions betweenSHWM videos and 2015 YouTube video distribution (datasource: [12]) religiouschallengestoryreviewgamechattinghomelifeartistichow-to
Figure 4: Number of videos in each video styles ccepted Manuscript
CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha
Title: Pro chefs make 9 kinds of pantry sandwiches | Test Kitchen Talks @ Home | Bon Appétit.Content: 9 chefs show how to cook pantry sandwiches at home. The YouTubers cook whileexplaining each step.Provisions: guidance and integrationTitle: Ariana Grande Performs ’I Won’t Say I’m In Love’ - The Disney Family SingalongContent: A YouTuber sings a Disney song while acting funny postures. The song is about theexperience of falling in love.Provisions: attachment and integrationTitle: Corona Virus Do’s & Don’ts!
Table 5: Videos with highest like count in the top 5 video styles. From top to bottom: how-to , artistic , homelife , chatting , and game . The social provisions were annotated by MTurk participants. 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑝 < . homelife and chatting had significantly higher 𝑐𝑜𝑣 than artistic , how-to , challenge , story and game videos (all 𝑝 < . RQ2 probes how SHWM videos associate with the social provisions[14]. Social integration and guidance were the most-supported pro-visions (Figure 6). Attachment and reassurance of worth had asimilar amount of videos. Opportunity for nurturance and reliable
COVID-19 mentioning (cov) N u m b e r o f v i d e o s Figure 5: The distribution of COVID-19 mentioning. On X-axis, 0 for “not mentioned” and 3 for “highly mentioned” alliance, the two social provisions come from family-like relation-ships, were supported by the fewest. Among 1488 videos, 77 weretagged not to associate with any social provision. Spearman’s 𝜌 test suggested weak positive correlations between 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 and 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜌 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 and 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜌 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 and 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜌 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 and 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ( 𝜌 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 . The alpha value to decide modelsignificance was 0.0083 (0.05/6, after Bonferroni correction). One-sided Fisher’s exact test was the posthoc to identify associationsbetween styles and provisions ( 𝛼 = . ccepted Manuscript How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan alliancenonenurturancereassuranceattachmentguidanceintegration ρ = . ρ = . ρ = . ρ = . Figure 6: Number of videos providing each of the social pro-visions. Vertical bars show correlations. story review religious how-to homelife game chatting challenge allianceattachmentguidanceintegrationnurturancereassurance artistic
Figure 7: The percentages of videos providing the six socialprovisions by different video stylesFigure 8: Significant associations between video styles andsocial provisions. Green triangles are positive associations.Red ones are negative associations. p* < 0.05, p** < 0.01, p***< 0.001.
Social integration describes a friend-basednetwork in which people share common interests and concerns. InSHWM, social integration was a pervasive social provision providedby most video styles. Except for religious videos, the participantsrated more than 49% videos in all other styles to provide social in-tegration (Figure 7). The LR model revealed a collective significanteffect of 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 on 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 having significant variable effects( 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 = . artistic , chal-lenge , game , and review had significantly more videos providingsocial integration (Figure 8). While how-to and religious had signifi-cantly fewer videos related to social integration than other styles.It was also noticed that videos with high COVID-19 mentioningwere less associated with 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ( 𝑐𝑜𝑒 = − . 𝜒 = . Guidance refers to a mentor-like relationship inwhich people obtain advice and assistance from a trustworthy per-son. YouTube communities include professional creators who canimpart skills and knowledge through step-by-step instructions orknowledge explanation. [7, 10]. The LR model revealed that the 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 had a significant positive effect on 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 = . how-to videos (Figure 8). Posthoc showed that onlythe how-to style had a significantly higher proportion (88.77%) ofvideos that provide guidance. While guidance videos were createdduring COVID-19, they were not particularly mentioning this dis-aster ( 𝑐𝑜𝑒 = − . 𝜒 = . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 = . Attachment describes family-like relationshipsthat create a sense of safety and closeness to dispel emotional lone-liness. LR model suggested a collective significant effect between 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 , 𝑐𝑜𝑣 , and 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 < . chatting , homelife , and religious videos had significantly higher proportionsof videos providing attachment, while challenge , game , and how-to had significantly fewer (Figure 8). In chatting videos, YouTubersinteracted with the audience through face-to-face talking, whichgave the audience a sense of attachment. Homelife videos wereat-home activities to show YouTuber’s intimacy. Religious videosprovided attachment by showing prayers or quotes from religiousscriptures. In contrast to social integration and guidance, videosthat offered attachment appeared to be more related to COVID-19.The coefficient for 𝑐𝑜𝑣 was 0.52 ( 𝜒 = . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 < . Similar toattachment, the opportunity for nurturance and reliable allianceare derived from family-based relationships. The former describesa relationship where one feels responsible for the other’s wellbe-ing. The latter emphasizes one can count on the other under anycircumstances. However, these two provisions were supported bythe fewest SHWM videos. Since they had similar LR and posthocresults, this section explains these two provisions together. LRmodel suggested that 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 had an significant effect on 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 < . 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 < . homelife , chatting , and religious videos had significantly more videoswith 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (Figure 8). The coefficient of 𝑐𝑜𝑣 in the modelwas 0.81 ( 𝜒 = . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 < . 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 , posthoc analysis showed that chatting and religious videos were associated with 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (Fig-ure 8). The coefficient of 𝑐𝑜𝑣 in the LR model was 0.58 ( 𝜒 = . ccepted Manuscript CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha 𝑝 < . Home-life videos also provided opportunity for nurturance. The concernsover COVID-19 encouraged YouTubers to make videos to providethese two family-like provisions, despite they were only providedby fewer SHWM videos.
Reassurance of worth is a relation-ship in which one’s skills and abilities are acknowledged by others,which is usually achieved by offering help or understanding toothers [14]. The LR analysis suggested that 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 was a significantimpact factor to this provision, but 𝑐𝑜𝑣 did not affect 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ( 𝜒 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑣 = . artistic is the only video style posi-tively associated with this social provision. 163 out of 340 artistic videos were tagged to support reassurance of worth, while homelife , religious , review , and story videos had significantly fewer videoswith this provision (Figure 8). Considering that artistic videos alsoprovided social integration, participants considered that YouTu-bers presented artistic content or performance to entertain viewerswhile hoping their skills and abilities can be acknowledged. RQ3 explores how videos with different social provisions affectedviewer engagement to imply how different types of parasocial rela-tionships affect viewers’ interactions with the video and their effectson mitigating loneliness. For each social provision, the authors com-pared if demonstrating a social provision increased or decreasedthe three popularity measurements, two activity measurements,and two comment emotion measurements. The comparison wasperformed within each of the nine video style groups. OrdinaryLeast Squares (OLS) model was used as the multivariate analysismethod. To ensure the model’s comprehensiveness, the model alsoincorporated subscriber count ( 𝑠𝑢𝑏 ) as an additional independentfactor. Therefore, social provisions (dummy variables) and sub-scriber count (numerical) were the independent variables to predictthe dependent variables of viewer engagement. 125 videos were ex-cluded from the viewer engagement analysis because their creatordisabled comment and/or like functions. The alpha to determinemodel significance was 0.0071 (0.05/7, after Bonferroni correction).The correlation between 𝑠𝑢𝑏 and each provision was tested withSpearman’s 𝜌 test to avoid multicollinearity. No significant correla-tion was detected. In the OLS model which predicted video popu-larity, 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 and 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 did not have any association with any socialprovision variables (only correlated with 𝑠𝑢𝑏 ). But for how-to , home-life , and review videos, besides 𝑠𝑢𝑏 , one or more social provisionshad significant effects on the comment count ( 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ). For how-to videos, 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 was significantly associated with 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ( 𝐹 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑡 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 = . 𝑝 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 = . homelife videos, opportunity for nurturance also had a pos-itive coefficient of 73.45 ( 𝐹 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑡 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑝 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 .For review videos, the model suggested that reassurance of worthhad a coefficient of 139.95 ( 𝐹 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 < . 𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑝 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . how-to , homelife , and review styles at-tracted more comments by providing attachment, nurturance, orreassurance. It implies that despite social provisions didn’t helpSHWM videos to reach more audience; they had a positive effect onencouraging more viewers to leave a comment. It is also interestingto note that for how-to and review videos, the social provisions thatpositively affected commenting were family-like provisions. How-ever, they were not the main social provisions offered by SHWM. Like rate ( 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 ) and comment rate ( 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 ) were the two metrics to measure viewers’ activeness in theinteractions with SHWM videos. OLS model suggested a collectivesignificant effects of social provisions and 𝑠𝑢𝑏 on 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 in how-to and artistic groups. For how-to videos,there was a significant effect of social provisions on 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 ( 𝐹 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 = . how-to videos attracted more likes per 100views ( 𝑐𝑜𝑒 = . 𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑝 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 had significant positive effects on 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 _ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 of artistic videos ( 𝐹 ( ) = . 𝑅 = . 𝑝 = . 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 in the model was 1.46 ( 𝑡 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . 𝑝 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = . how-to videos to gainmore likes and artistic videos to gain more comments. The resultimplies that showing alliance in how-to videos and nurturance in artistic videos encouraged viewers to more actively participate inthe parasocial interactions on YouTube. The comment analysis predicts the fre-quencies of emotional word in viewer comments by the factorsof social provisions and the subscriber count. 70245 commentsfrom 1135 videos (at most 200 for each video) were included inthis analysis (353 videos had no comment or disabled comment-ing). OLS model suggested no social provisions had significanteffects on 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 or 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 in any of the nine stylegroups. Therefore the authors cannot conclude that providingdifferent social provisions had an effect on comment emotions.The authors then chose to examine whether different video stylesand COVID-19 mentioning had an effect on comment emotions.The OLS model indicated significant effects of 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 and 𝑐𝑜𝑣 on 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 and 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 . 𝐶𝑜𝑣 showed a significant effectin the model which predicts 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 ( 𝑐𝑜𝑒 = . 𝑡 = . 𝑝 = . 𝑆𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 had significant effects on 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 and 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 ( 𝑝 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 < . 𝑝 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 _ 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 = . religious and homelife videos had significantly higher positive word frequenciesthan game , challenge , artistic , chatting , how-to , and story videos (all 𝑝 < . ccepted Manuscript How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan more negative, which suggest that COVID-19 content may evokenegative feelings. In contrast, viewers’ comments to religious and homelife videos, the two styles associated with attachment and nur-turance, were more positive than other video styles. As SHWM is amovement for promoting positive mental attitudes and avoidingloneliness, these results indicate that videos in these two styles ledto more positive viewer reactions and emotions to the YouTubers. artistic challenge chatting game homelife how-to religious review story0123 S c o r e ( w o r d s / c o mm e n t ) Postive ScoreNegative Score
Figure 9: The frequencies of positive and negative emotionalwords in videos in different styles
The analysis of SHWM suggested YouTubers sought to de-escalatedisaster attention in SHWM videos. Social media is used as a toolto produce, spread, and access disaster information during emer-gencies and disasters. Prior research focused on examining theaffordances of social media, including YouTube [4, 44], in dissemi-nating and receiving disaster information and serving as an emer-gency management tool [27, 37, 57]. For example, Twitter enhancedpublic situational awareness [61]; Facebook was a source of com-munity and official information [5, 11]; and Reddit was used for riskperception and speculation [23]. However, more exposure to theoverwhelming COVID-19 news via social media caused negativemental states such as stress and depression [16, 22]. Prior workson social media and disaster mental health mainly examined me-dia’s roles in mental health surveillance [32] offering mental healthservice [27], and enhancing community ties [49].The trending of
The analysis of social provisions in SHWM videos implied themanners in which parasocial relationships deliver social connec-tions. The participatory nature of YouTube makes it a platformfor ordinary people to contribute content and engage viewers toestablish parasocial relationships [7, 65]. Prior understanding ofparasocial relationships in video sharing surrounded how they areformed [13, 34] and their effects on the viewers’ daily activities[41, 58, 65]. Although studies showed that parasocial relationshipswere a source of alternative companionship and can help peopleshield against loneliness [19, 20, 24], there is limited knowledge ofhow YouTube-based parasocial relationships are embodied duringsocial distancing to help with loneliness.The examination of SHWM videos under Weiss’s typology of pro-visions revealed the construct of parasocial relationships in SHWMvideos and the roles YouTubers played in social distancing. The en-coding of SHWM videos suggested that YouTubers sought to offersocial connections typically obtained from friend-like, mentor-like,and family-like relationships. The authors found that social inte-gration was a dominant provision in most SHWM videos (providedby 63.35% videos). Acting as a friend-like character and sharingcommon interests was the most common parasocial relationshipin SHWM. This echoes prior findings that interest sharing helpedsocial media users overcome loneliness and depression [18, 43].Guidance was the second most common provisions available inSHWM videos. 42.32% of videos provided the guidance provision,most of which were how-to videos. This finding suggested thatbuilding informal mentorship through how-to videos [10] was alsoa common YouTubers’ style to supplement companionship. Family-like provisions, including attachment, nurturance, and alliance,were supported by the fewest videos. These videos shared intimate ccepted Manuscript
CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Niu, Bartolome, Mai, and Ha content, such as at-home activities, live-chatting, and religiousprayers, to build intimate provisions and family-like relationshipsfor people who need intimacy and emotional support. Social mediais known for connecting families and friends [27] and sharing emo-tional content during disasters [32]. YouTubers act as different rolesthrough their relationships with viewers to offer mental supportduring COVID-19. SHWM suggested that YouTubers can mitigatedisaster loneliness by sharing entertaining content to provide so-cial integration, teaching skills to provide guidance, and showingat-home activities or chatting to provide attachment.The correlations between video styles and social provisions sug-gest practical ways to utilize parasocial relationships to offer lone-liness support during a disaster. Viewers can find YouTubers whoimitate friend-, mentor-, and family-like connections to mitigateloneliness resulted from social distancing. Social integration wasthe most prevalent social provision in SHWM videos; therefore,designers may leverage YouTubers’ videos to design video applica-tions and services for people who were isolated from friends. Peoplewho miss mentor-like relationships, especially children and youthwhose schools are closed during the pandemic, can leverage therepository of how-to videos to learn various skills and knowledge.This affordance of YouTube can supplement the inadequate guid-ance provision. Videos that offer social integration and guidancecan also redirect viewers’ attention from the crisis. For people whoneed intimacy and closeness from a family-like relationship, such aspeople separated from families due to the disasters, video-sharingapplications and services may recommend YouTubers’ content inwhich they share their homelife activities or chat with the audienceto engender attachment and nurturance.
The viewer engagement analysis suggested videos with family-likeprovisions had better effects on inducing viewers’ social interac-tion participation. Prior studies suggested parasocial interactionscan engender intimacy and attachment [13], and help people fulfillthe social interaction need [33] and mitigate loneliness [24]. Videoviews, likes, and comments are metrics of viewer engagement toevaluate parasocial interactions in SHWM [33, 50]. The authors an-alyzed how social provisions affect viewer engagement to exploresocial provisions’ effects on parasocial relationships. The resultssuggested that when YouTubers seek to provide parasocial relation-ships to support mental wellbeing, offering family-like provisionshave a better overall effect on increasing viewer interactions andmitigating loneliness.There was no evidence that social provisions had effects onhelping SHWM videos to reach more viewers. Viewers’ emotionalexpression in comments was also unaffected by the expression ofsocial provisions. However, family-like social provisions demon-strated an overall positive effect on viewers’ activeness in parasocialrelationships. Attachment increased the number of comments of how-to videos, and opportunity for nurturance increased commentsof homelife videos. For viewers’ activity, alliance helped how-to videos to receive more likes per 100 views. Providing nurturanceallowed artistic videos to gain more comments for every 100 views.Although social provisions did not significantly affect comment emotions, the analysis on video styles revealed that religious and homelife videos – the two styles bound to attachment and nurtu-rance – had more positive comments than others. Viewers weremore positive after watching videos in those two styles. Prior stud-ies suggested parasocial interactions with YouTubers can avoid andmitigate loneliness [19, 24, 50]. The authors’ findings suggested thatSHWM videos that supply attachment, nurturance, and alliancehad higher overall viewer engagement. As a result, videos withthose provisions positively affected viewers’ activeness in the so-cial interactions on YouTube, indicating more potentials to mitigateloneliness. However, these three family-like provisions were alsoamong the least provided social provisions in SHWM videos. Onlyaround 27% SHWM videos provided attachment and opportunityfor nurturance, and only 4.9% videos provided reliable alliance.Experiencing close family and friend relationships was helpfulto reduce loneliness during COVID-19 [16]. YouTubers should con-sider providing more family-like provisions – by showing intimacy,caring for viewers’ wellbeing, and showing a willingness to help– to increase viewers’ interactions and positivity in the parasocialrelationships. Platform designers may consider increasing engage-ment on YouTube for mitigating loneliness by encouraging videos toexpress family-like provisions. Promising design solutions to growYouTuber-viewer intimacy include recommending video styles thatenhance family-like feelings and implementing communicationmethods that allow YouTubers to show intimacy and support. ManyYouTubers already established family-like profiles among their fans,such as popular homelife vloggers, family-friendly streamers, andmany ASMRtists [1]. Platforms can invite and encourage theseYouTubers to make loneliness-supporting videos during disastersto support public mental wellbeing.
Social media plays an increasingly important role in supportingpeople’s mental wellbeing during a difficult time like COVID-19.Video-sharing platforms like YouTube are conducive for providingsocial connectedness and reducing loneliness during social distanc-ing. This work examines the
How-to videos supported the need for guidance.
Homelife , chatting , and religious videos offered a sense of attachment and nurturance. The ccepted Manuscript How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness? CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan viewer engagement analysis suggested that family-like provisionswere the least offered provisions, but they positively affected viewerengagement and parasocial interactions. Based on these findings,the authors suggest that SHWM videos sought to de-escalate themental tension caused by COVID-19. YouTubers offered friend-likeand mentor-like provisions the most, while the family-like provi-sions are supported the least. YouTubers and platform designersshould encourage content that offers attachment, nurturance, andalliance during the pandemic to increase parasocial interactionsand avoid or mitigate loneliness.Moving forward, future studies will extend the findings of thepresent work to advance the knowledge of supporting disastermental health through video sharing. As user-generated videoswill play an increasing role, new studies and designs are needed tounderstand the interplay between video sharing and mental well-being. Follow-up research will extend the findings of this studyand develop new design knowledge. For example, one unansweredquestion in this work is to what degree parasocial interactions canpsychologically supplement various social needs during a disas-ter. The authors do not argue that parasocial relationships withYouTubers can or should replace realistic social interactions withfamilies and friends. However, YouTubers offered an alternative butgrowingly popular way to let people stay socially connected duringdisasters; therefore, it requires a more in-depth investigation. Socialinteractions are easily affected by disasters. YouTube provides anoption to satisfy social-emotional needs through parasocial interac-tions. This work’s findings offer a seminal idea regarding the use ofYouTube and YouTubers’ roles in supporting disaster mental well-being. It is necessary to examine YouTube viewers’ cognitive andbehavioral changes after interacting with YouTube videos duringand after disasters. Future work will also investigate new trendingvideo styles such as ASMR and live-streams in obtaining social pro-visions. These efforts will identify new possibilities of applicationsand services to utilize video sharing to support mental wellbeingin intensive situations. It is essential to explore their options inintervening in mental health issues of the vulnerable populations.
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