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Abstract

Over the past several years, the genre of autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR videos, has exploded on YouTube with a multitude of channels dedicated to the creation of ASMR content with videos often getting millions of views. ASMR videos seek to trigger a tingling sensation through the use of specific aural and visual stimuli. These stimuli often involve whispering, scratching and tapping sounds.

The recent Covid pandemic has helped spawn a new sub-genre of ASMR videos that approach the global situation in a number of ways ranging from roleplaying getting tested for Covid to simply attempting to debunk myths about the pandemic to help with people's anxiety.

Given the reported increase in stress/anxiety caused by the Covid pandemic, this paper aims to explore how content creators have sought to capitalize upon the new situation society finds itself in through the production of Covid related ASMR videos.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Publisher Keywords:	covid, YouTube, ASMR, content, stress
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology

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