An Ethnography Study of a Viral YouTube Educational Video in Ecuador: Dealing With Death and Grief in Times of COVID-19

Abstract

In Western societies, death is a social and educational taboo. Poor education about death and mourning processes and overprotective family and social attitudes move children away from death to avoid “unnecessary suffering.” The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted these shortcomings and the difficult management of grief's complexity under sudden and unexpected scenarios. The need for immediate and constant updates related to COVID-19 benefited from social media coverage's immediacy. The use of YouTube as a digital platform to disseminate/search for knowledge exploded, raising the need to conduct ethnographic studies to describe this community's people and culture and improve the booming social media's educational capacity and quality. The present virtual ethnography studied 255,862 YouTube views/users and their behavior related to “Vuela Mariposa, Vuela,” a children's story available online since 2009 (not monetized) about the cycle of life, death, and disenfranchised grief (not acknowledged by society) that went viral (+>999%) on May. To our knowledge, this case study is the first original research that explores the ethnography of (i) a viral video, (ii) on death and grief taboo topics, (iii) for prescholars, and (iv) before and during the COVID pandemic. The quantitative and qualitative analyses identified a change in the users' profiles, engagement, and feedback. During the previous 11 years, the users were 35–44 years old Mexican and Spanish women. Those in grief used narrative comments to explain their vital crisis and express their sorrow. In the pandemic, the analysis pointed to Ecuador as the virality geographical niche in a moment when the tragic scenarios in its streets were yet unknown. The timeline match with the official records confirmed the severity of their pandemic scenario. The viral video reached a broad population, with normal distribution for age, and including male gender. Engagement by non-subscribers, direct search (traffic sources), and mean visualization times suggested educational purposes as confirmed by the users' feedback with critical thinking referring to the cycle of life's meaning and societal mourning. For the youngest users, the video was part of academic assignments. The ethnography pointed at YouTube as a flexible education resource, immediately reaching diverse users, and being highly sensitive to critical events.

Uneven Implications of Lockdown Amid COVID-19 in India: From Harassment, Stigma, Crime, and Internally Displaced People to Stress and Coping Strategies in the Middle/Upper Class

“…Social media helps as contagion and vector, for surveillance and monitoring, and disease control [ 145 ]. There have been several studies conducted on social media content analysis for various platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram [ 146 , 147 , 148 , 149 ]. With the help of newspapers, the information not only reached the urban cities but also the rural areas or communities.…”

Online Ethnography for People With Chronic Conditions: Scoping Review

“…Instagram is pictorial, Reddit is text-based, and Twitter comprises short posts, all of which can facilitate sustained discussions where people share their in-depth experiences. Additionally, YouTube and video websites are public video-sharing platforms which may serve as important avenues to gain an understanding of people's viewpoints [66][67][68]. Online ethnographers could choose one or more platforms as data sources depending on the research objectives.…”

The Trajectory of Depression through Disenfranchised Grief in Young Widows in Times of COVID-19: A Case Report from the Rural Population in India

“…During the pandemic, it was estimated that approximately 60 million people worldwide were mourning the loss of their loved ones [11]. The shared experience of loss by society has given rise to collective grief, and the grieving process has shifted from individual mourning to societal mourning [12]. Despite this, there were instances where people's losses and grief went unacknowledged by society, which left them feeling unsupported and neglected leading to disenfranchisement grief.…”