Content uploaded by Maria del Rio Carral
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Maria del Rio Carral on Jun 05, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
Available online 12 May 2021
2590-2601/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Professional YouTubers’ health videos as research material: Formulating a
multi-method design in health psychology
María del Río Carral
a
,
*
, Lucia Volpato
a
, Chlo´
e Michoud
a
, Thanh-Trung Phan
b
,
Daniel Gatica-P´
erez
b
a
Institut de Psychologie, Universit´
e de Lausanne, Quartier Mouline, Bˆ
atiment G´
eopolis, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
b
Social Computing Group, Idiap Research Institute and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Centre du Parc, Rue Marconi 19, 1920 Martigny, Switzerland
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
YouTubers
Visual methods
Narrative methods
Automatised methods
ABSTRACT
Professional YouTubers are developing a new culture through which they stage health content in pervasive ways.
The present article aims to provide a methodological approach to analyse this type of content by adopting a
critical perspective in health psychology. To achieve this, we rst dene our theoretical framework. Second, we
formulate a multi-method design combining narrative and visual analyses, as well as automatised linguistic
procedures. We then illustrate the potential of our methodology through concrete examples. Implications of this
methodology in health psychology are discussed with regard to healthism, a dominant contemporary trend that
strongly values the individualised pursuit of health.
1. Introduction
YouTube is a social media that offers its subscribers the opportunity
to gain visibility by communicating through video production and
display. It has scaled up from a small community of video makers into
one of the most inuential platforms (Lange, 2007). While gaming,
comedy and beauty channels have the highest number of subscribers
(Johansson, 2017), lifestyle videos have recently gained in popularity
(Carrotte et al., 2015). By presenting how to ‘be healthy’, ‘become
healthier’ and ‘live better’, these videos have become particularly
pervasive and popular, namely among young females (Carrotte et al.,
2015).
YouTube has transitioned from a User Generated Content broadcast –
with amateur connotations – to Professionally Generated Content, sup-
ported by an array of commercial strategies (Kim, 2012), dened by
user-friendly functionalities and a highly protable potential (Hou,
2019). This has led to the rise of professional YouTubers
1
, a new form of
labour where successful user-generated content is nancially compen-
sated (Burgess, 2012). YouTubers’ professional activity is aimed at
reaching large audiences and increase the number of subscribers to their
personal channel where a large number of videos is regularly uploaded
(Khamis et al., 2017). This activity consists of unique forms of
self-mediation as YouTubers share their ‘authentic’ everyday lives by
building a relationship based on ‘intimacy’ and ‘honesty’ with their
audience (García-Rapp and Roca-Cuberes, 2017; Thomson, 2017). In the
realm of health and lifestyle, YouTubers document through their videos
how to lead healthy and happier lives (Khamis et al., 2017). Such con-
tent is shown by YouTubers by performing specic everyday behaviours,
habits and routines (e.g. cooking, eating, exercising, sleeping) presented
within particular life settings (e.g. bedroom, home, car, kitchen, etc.).
Also, YouTubers talk in these videos about what they do, how they feel,
and what they think of such content.
Alongside the rise of a social media culture based on commercial
purposes and where lifestyle YouTubers have become increasingly
popular, we need to pay further attention to ways in which YouTubers
construct health content promoted in their personal channels, and how
these constructions may be shaping meanings attached to health and
wellbeing. Certain authors have argued that Western contemporary
societies are governed by individualistic logics underpinning neoliberal
systems, and that such logics inuence health experiences (K. Crawford
et al., 2015; R. Crawford, 1980). According to this trend of ‘healthism’,
health is viewed as an individual matter and becomes a life purpose in
itself (R. Crawford, 1980). From this ‘healthist’ perspective, being
healthy or unhealthy are regarded as a result of individual behaviours
and choices (Riley et al., 2018). Consequently, individuals tend to be
held accountable for their own health, regardless of economic disparities
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: maria.delriocarral@unil.ch (M. del Río Carral).
1
Throughout the manuscript, we refer to ‘professional YouTubers’ as ‘YouTubers’.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Methods in Psychology
journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/methods-in-psychology
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2021.100051
Received 23 November 2020; Received in revised form 30 April 2021; Accepted 9 May 2021
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
2
and the embeddedness of their health practices in socio-cultural contexts
(Riley et al., 2018). Healthism has become dominant in Western soci-
eties thus there is an urgent need to study how this phenomenon may be
enhanced by social media.
While the pursuit of health has become even stronger via the
expansion of social media and healthism, work in psychology on social
media health content has mainly focused on end-consumers. Yet,
research aimed at analysing this phenomenon by focusing on health
content uploaded by YouTubers remains scarce. The present article aims
to develop a methodological approach to analyse lifestyle health-related
videos on YouTube from a critical health psychology perspective. More
specically, it will contribute to bridge the gap in the literature by: (1)
integrating a theoretical framework that can provide the basis for a
methodological approach; (2) formulating an original multi-method
design, while presenting potential solutions to the encountered chal-
lenges, and (3) illustrating the potential of this methodological
approach. Our contributions can orient researchers in health psychology
interested in analysing the specicities of health video content facili-
tated by the contemporary social media culture.
2. Dening our framework: delimiting the phenomenon under
investigation
The quality of research in psychology can be enhanced by adjusting
the methods to the research goals, that is, by reecting upon the most
adequate means to analyse a given phenomenon (Vygotski, 2003; Willig
and Stainton-Rogers, 2008). Chamberlain (2000) has underlined the
importance of embracing methods with regard to specic theoretical
frameworks and research paradigms that dene them. Inspired by
Janesick (1994), this author has raised awareness on the risk of ‘meth-
odolatry’, that is, the dominant use of particular methods by overlooking
the research goals or the theoretical foundations (Chamberlain, 2000).
Thus, it has been argued that specicities of the research question, eld
of investigation, and population shall be taken into account in method
design (Brinkmann, 2015). Critical health psychologists have therefore
encouraged researchers to adapt their methods to given phenomena
(Chamberlain et al., 2011; Willig, 2001). From this perspective, re-
searchers are encouraged to practice reexivity throughout the research
process (del Rio Carral and Santiago-Delefosse, 2014; Finlay and Gough,
2003). This implies that researchers should become self-aware of their
epistemological, theoretical, and methodological position, as well as
underpinning sociocultural values that contribute to shape the phe-
nomenon under investigation. On the basis of these considerations, our
study shall embrace three key specicities that dene our research topic:
−YouTubers’ health content framed as ‘health practices’ (e.g. eating,
drinking, resting) which are socio-culturally embedded (del Rio
Carral and Lyons, 2020; Hargreaves, 2011). These health practices
are staged by YouTubers as integrative parts of everyday life (e.g.
‘my morning routine’, ‘a day in the life’, ‘my healthy habits’); take
place in specic settings (e.g. bedroom, living room, kitchen), and
engage materiality (e.g. saucepan, vegetables, candle, yoga mat).
−The participatory social media culture with specic affordances (e.g.
participatory logic, YouTube conditions of use, commercial pur-
poses). This includes self-mediation (Khamis et al., 2017) given that
content ise performed and narrated by YouTubers themselves (as
opposed to what certain scholars refer to as ‘naturally occurring’ data
(Knoblauch, 2009, p. 181)).
−The multi-modality of YouTubers’ video content, including speech
(telling a story), audio-editing, (e.g. music), and visual content (e.g.
sequences of illustrations, activity, graphics).
2.1. YouTubers’ health content framed in terms of ‘health practices’
Social practices theory has recently conceptualised the links between
individual behaviours and broader social structures, by viewing health
behaviours as contextualised, socially shared practices (Meier et al.,
2018; Reckwitz, 2002; Shove et al., 2012). This framework highlights
the importance of analysing social practices as part of life contexts (Blue
et al., 2016; del Rio Carral and Lyons, 2020). According to social prac-
tices theory, health practices are socio-culturally embedded activities
that take place in everyday life. They engage affectivity, interactions,
materiality, and forms of institutional organisation (Hargreaves, 2011).
Individual behaviours are viewed as part of broader patterns of shared
social practices; therefore, people tend to act according to meanings
shaped by sociocultural discourses (Reckwitz, 2002). Available for a
given social group, the latter can induce normalised ways of acting
within specic contexts (Hargreaves, 2011). These practices are not
completely rational; they include an affective and non-premeditated
dimension that can entail change (Giddens, 1984).
While this theory has shown its potential in analysing health prac-
tices among given social groups (e.g. del Rio Carral and Lyons, 2020),
further research is required to understand health practices performed in
the media culture by YouTubers. While their practices are deemed to be
‘authentic’ and reecting their own everyday life, they are also staged
through self-mediation for visibility purposes. This calls for an in-depth
understanding of the social media culture and its broader societal
context. In the next paragraph, we describe recent work in social sci-
ences having greatly contributed to such understanding.
2.2. The YouTube media culture and new forms of self-mediation by
YouTubers
YouTubers’ activity has been explored in terms of its contribution to
a recent media culture, in which YouTubers are provided with a space
for product-placement and advertising, aimed at inuencing viewers’
choices and behaviours (Thomson, 2017). Performative acts by the
YouTuber persona are essential ingredients to create a connection with
the viewer (Pereira et al., 2018). Authenticity and intimacy (Abidin,
2015; Raun, 2018) are two key concepts used to dene the exclusive
relationship that YouTubers wish to establish with their audience. This
relationship is constructed through codied practices and narratives on
the self under the form of story-telling (Dreon et al., 2011; Scolari and
Fraticelli, 2017) and advertorials (Abidin, 2013). Existing research in
disciplines including sociology and marketing has provided critical
in-depth analysis of video content, such as beauty categories with regard
to the cultural premises underlying YouTubers’ videos, and how these
relate to broader postfeminist discourses (Bevan, 2017; García-Rapp,
2017).
In the lifestyle YouTube category, narratives on the self in You-
Tubers’ videos are most manifest through health-related practices
including sleeping, eating, and exercising (Abidin, 2013, 2015).
Through their activity, these YouTubers follow a highly codied visual
aesthetic achieved through expert video-editing (Pereira et al., 2018).
YouTuber videos on how to ‘be healthier’ and ‘live better’ are most
popular (Carrotte et al., 2015, p. 13). With few exceptions (e.g. J. Harris,
2019; Ratwatte and Mattacola, 2019), there is scarce literature on ways
in which health practices are constructed in these videos nor on how
health may be reshaped by this media culture.
Critical health psychology provides appropriate concepts and tools to
address the complexity underpinning experiences on health by exam-
ining meanings attached to them (Lyons and Chamberlain, 2006; Willig
and Stainton-Rogers, 2008), while analysing stories as socio-culturally
embedded narratives (Murray, 2003). With regard to YouTubers’
videos more particularly, this eld has the potential to take into account
materiality (e.g. settings, spaces, objects) and life contexts, including
everyday life (e.g. the YouTube culture, social embeddedness of prac-
tices) (Reckwitz, 2002). This complexity remains relatively unexplored
from a methodological standpoint.
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
3
2.3. The multi-modality of YouTubers’ video content
Digital spaces have long been an area of interest among social sci-
entists, who have investigated how people engage in a variety of online
social practices. The specicity of this body of research is a focus on
‘natural’ data, consisting of visual material that has not been produced
for research purposes and where participants’ behaviour is independent
from researchers’ activity (Schnettler and Raab, 2008). Online ethnog-
raphy or ‘netnography’ (Kaur-Gill and Dutta, 2017) uses
participant-observation techniques to study online interactions and uses
online interview techniques (Marshall, 2010). Certain studies have paid
attention to online communities such as blogs, allowing for the collec-
tion of valuable information regarding in-group dynamics through dig-
ital ethnography (Brotsky and Giles, 2007). Other studies in the
human-computer interaction literature have explicitly studied user
practices in YouTube health videos using digital ethnography (Huh
et al., 2014).
The rise of technologies aimed at video-production have led to a
variety of visual digital material. An important body of research in
human and social sciences has developed methods for visual data
analysis (Schnettler, 2013). Qualitative research has expanded mainly
within sociology and anthropology through an array of approaches
inspired by forms of social constructivism.
Visual Data Analysis (VDA) targets visual analysis of behaviour by
identifying markers on emotions (e.g. through facial expressions) and
social interactions (verbal and non-verbal exchanges) with people and
objects (Nassauer and Legewie, 2021). Moreover, Interpretive Visual
Analysis (IVA) (Knoblauch, 2009) and Multimodal Interaction Analysis
(MIA) (Norris, 2012) both use action or interaction as a key unit of
analysis. IVA and MIA are interested in social interactions, inspired by
forms of conversational analysis, where language is viewed as perfor-
mative (Sacks, 1992). Rooted in social phenomenology (Berger and
Luckmann, 1966; Schütz, 1967), IVA adopts a hermeneutic approach to
study the visual and spoken dimension of social interactions in work
environments such as medical encounters (e.g. Knoblauch, 2006). It
focuses on complex networks of social actors participating to
co-construct social realities. Social actors are dened as: people, cultural
tools, gestures, objects, and environments (Knoblauch, 2009). Video is
used as a means to collect data and researchers become active agents in
their interpretation of visual material. MIA has been referred to as a
holistic methodology with the potential to study cultural tools such as
language, objects and gestures, as well as their interaction with envi-
ronments and materiality (Norris, 2012).
VDA, IVA and MIA have greatly contributed to the understanding of
digital and visual material, alongside technical advances in video
recording. They provide valuable information to understand the key role
of social actors, cultural tools and materiality in online and ofine social
realms. These approaches have also highlighted the active role of re-
searchers in the collection and analysis of videos and the importance of
acknowledging researchers’ interpretations as part of the research pro-
cess. Inspired by these elements, the present study mobilised existing
methods as a starting point to embrace our topic within a critical health
psychology perspective. To do so, we designed an original approach to
examine meanings attached to YouTubers’ performed health practices
and rooted in a media culture, part of a broader societal context. We
adopted a social constructionist perspective (Burr, 2015; Engestr¨
om
et al., 1999) interested in ways in which people actively engage in the
(re)production of meanings through language and activity (Vygotski,
1997). Language is conceptualised as a major cultural system that en-
ables people to make sense of the world, others, and the self (Murray,
2003; Vygotski, 1997).
3. Formulating our methodology from a critical health
psychology perspective
Once having dened the theoretical framework, we describe key
methodological, ethical and practical aspects that were addressed in an
ongoing study on YouTubers’ health videos.
3.1. Adopting an active research posture of ‘bricoleur’
In critical health psychology, researchers have been invited to act as
‘bricoleurs’ by becoming aware of epistemological, ontological, and
theoretical decisions to be taken throughout the research process
(Chamberlain, 2000; Willig and Stainton-Rogers, 2008). In our study,
we acknowledged the active role that researchers inevitably play in the
construction of the research process (del Rio Carral and
Santiago-Delefosse, 2014; Vygotski, 1999). This posture is coherent with
neighbouring approaches where the researcher adopts an active role,
namely that of IVA (Knoblauch, 2009; Schnettler and Raab, 2008) and
VDA (Nassauer and Legewie, 2021).
Moreover, critical scholars have urged researchers to further develop
study-tailored strategies to move beyond mere data description and to
allow for further interpretation (Brinkmann, 2015). Willig (2000) has
previously highlighted the limits of static, descriptive methodologies,
especially when exploring the multifaceted and often contradictory
character of health experiences. According to her, more dynamic
methodologies are needed, for example by taking into account the
concrete practices. As critical health psychologists and ‘bricoleurs’, we
thus analysed YouTubers’ video content in terms of health practices
(Blue et al., 2016) to examine what meanings are associated to such
practices and, foremost, how such meanings are constructed (Willig,
2000).
3.2. Dening a tailored multi-method design
To formulate our methodology, we considered the following ele-
ments: a) health content channelled by YouTubers through their videos;
b) ways in which YouTubers talked about health practices presented in
such videos; c) concrete settings where practices took place, including
materiality and, d) sociocultural logics shaping such content (e.g.
healthism). On such basis, we dened an original multi-method design
dened by two stages.
The rst stage addressed two questions: ‘What are the health practices
performed by YouTubers?’ and ‘How are such health practices con-
structed and presented?‘. This stage aimed at the interpretation of verbal
and visual dimensions of health videos from lifestyle YouTubers. It
implemented narrative and visual methods of analysis upon a selection
of fteen videos.
The second stage examined the question: ‘How can the exploration of
a large amount of lifestyle videos by YouTubers support our qualitative
analyses?‘. Aimed at illustrating the qualitative outcomes, we conducted
automatised analyses upon a large number of videos based on tran-
scriptions of YouTubers’ speech (50 YouTubers with 50 videos each, a
total of 2500 videos).
Our multi-method tailored design raised several ethical and practical
challenges that we address here below, to then proceed to illustrate its
potential.
3.3. Ethical and practical challenges: useful considerations
Social media platforms as YouTube remain relatively recent terri-
tories for psychological research, and ‘good practices’ in leading this
kind of studies are still under construction (Germain et al., 2018; Pat-
terson, 2018). In 2017, the British Psychological Society (BPS) published
a set of ethical guidelines to support researchers in psychology to
develop internet-based studies, highlighting ve key principles: Respect
for the Autonomy; Privacy and Dignity of Individuals and Communities;
Scientic Integrity; Social Responsibility; Maximising Benets and Minimis-
ing Harm (British Psychological Society, 2017). When focusing on You-
Tube, it is important to integrate these principles and align them with
the research question and the platform’s functionalities. Nonetheless,
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
4
several ethical and practical challenges remain when proceeding to their
concrete implementation. Below, we present suggestions that can be
useful to address ethical and practical issues raised by copyright pro-
tection, recruitment and data collection, participants’ consent and
condentiality.
a) Copyright policy for research on YouTube videos
The rst encountered challenge was the major difference across
YouTubers’ videos regarding whether they allow for video replication or
not. Indeed, the analysis of YouTube content may require uploading –
thus copy or reproduce – some or all of the video material (e.g. images,
sound, close-caption). The legal framework of YouTube videos is
constituted by the Creative Common Licenses and the country’ specic
legal context. Creative Commons Licenses (CCL) give creators a stan-
dardized way to grant the public permission to use their work under
copyright law (‘About CC Licenses’, n.d.; Creative Commons Legal Code, n.
d.). YouTube offers the possibility to post videos on a standard license or
on a CC-BY license, allowing for the copy and reproduction of online
content (YouTube, 2019a).
It is important to consider what type of digital content may better
correspond to the study’s research question. For instance, while the
Creative Commons Licence videos can be downloaded and used freely,
they may not be representative of the type of content that is mostly
watched on the platform. Furthermore, regulations on the reproduction
(e.g. downloading) of copyright material for research projects depend on
the platform’s guidelines and on national legislations, which can change
from a country to another. It is hence advisable to seek for ethical and
legal advises from institutional experts, to adjust the research design to
the copyright framework.
As our investigation was conducted in Switzerland, the legal context
allows for the reproduction of copyright material for research purposes
(Loi sur le droit ). Thus, we collected both CCL and non-CCL content and
downloaded subtitles via automatically generated close captions. Our
research protocol (C_SSP_012021_00001) was approved by the
‘Research Ethics Commission of the University of Lausanne’
(CER-UNIL).
b) Recruitment and data collection
Socio-demographic information on YouTubers is difcult to access
(Barker, 2019), yet inclusion criteria shall still be established on the
basis of their relevancy to the study’s research question. Inclusion
criteria to be considered are: the YouTubers’ language, age, number of
subscribers, registration country and types of associated licenses, and
other elements related to video-production.
Furthermore, while YouTubers’ videos are publicly available online,
their access is framed by an array of complex factors that are context and
user-dependent, especially with the available algorithmic services such
as RSS. It has been argued that ‘you do not look for the data. The data nd
you’ (Lash, 2006, p. 580). In fact, the researcher’s age, gender,
geographical position, the use of cookies, the browsing history affect the
videos that YouTube will show (Barker, 2019). Best practices should
therefore acknowledge the researcher’s posture while collecting digital
data. In practice, two options can be considered. According to the rst
one, researchers can decide to embrace the ‘algorithmic fate’ and
analyse the data associated to their digital identity, for example through
‘snowball’ data-collection (i.e. being guided from one video to the next
according to YouTube’s suggestions) (Hou, 2019). The second option
consists of decreasing the inuence of YouTube’s recommendations
through rigorous keyword-based search (Anthony et al., 2013; Barker,
2019). This second type of data collection method allows to identify
which channels broadcast specic content and to reach saturation
within a relatively wide and diversied video-sample. Through this
process, it is possible to access videos that are not necessarily recom-
mended to the user (the researcher) through YouTube’s algorithm-based
suggestions. A concrete example of taking a manual keyword-based
approach on the YouTube search engine on health content would
entail creating a specic keyword list and each word would then need to
be tested in the search-engine of the platform (Anthony et al., 2013).
Such list requires regular revision, until no further relevant results are
found.
c) Participants’ consent
On YouTubers’ videos the borders between ‘private’ and ‘public’ are
often blurred, as the platform allows for a new kind of performance
where the self and daily activities have become ‘public’ through vlog-
ging (Gamson, 2011). The public and private dimensions are continu-
ously negotiated by YouTubers themselves in their video content, where
intimacy is a key component of the subscriber-YouTuber relationship in
spite of the public character of the interface (Lange, 2007). According to
the denition of ‘public content’ provided by the BPS (2017), YouTube
videos are not to be considered as ‘private content’.
The uploading of ‘publicly available’ material online does not
necessarily imply an agreement of use for research purposes (Legewie
and Nassauer, 2018) and researchers may face the dilemma on how to
conceptualise consent in this digital setting. Participants’ consent should
not be overlooked. Thus, it is strongly recommended that YouTubers are
informed on the use of their videos for research purposes, as well as their
right to ask any questions concerning the research. Given that You-
Tubers are highly solicited, we advise to write a simple, clear, brief
email, as well as send regular email reminders to maximise the chances
of receiving a reply with regard to consent. In our study, 214 CCL and
non-CCL YouTubers were contacted: 180 did not respond and 34 gave
their explicit consent (16%). Both ‘opt-in’ or ‘opt-out’ requests for study
participation are both acknowledged strategies in digital media. How-
ever, opt-in requests are likely to hinder the research process, as there is
a signicant risk of not being able to conduct the research due to lack of
responses. Even when offering a nancial compensation, opt-in methods
may still achieve low response rates (Anthony et al., 2013). Regardless
the decision taken, the rationale underpinning such decision should be
mentioned in an ad hoc ethical application prior to the study. Finally,
some participants may choose to withdraw from the study once the data
collection has been completed. Following best practices on
post-participation withdrawal (British Psychological Society, 2017), raw
data gathered prior to their decision should be deleted from the
database.
d) Condentiality
YouTube does not guarantee any condentiality with respect to
content posted (YouTube, 2019b). As YouTubers’ aim is to attract a
larger number of viewers, some may wish to be cited. This is why par-
ticipants in our study were offered the possibility to decide if they
wished to be acknowledged. However, common practices in psychology
require that participants’ identities are coded. Any information on
participants’ identity should not be made public. Germaine and col-
leagues (2018) have suggested the use of ‘Google-proong’ verbatim
quotes to verify whether the internet-search engine may lead a lay
web-user to a given YouTuber’s identity. We thus recommend that all
direct quotes are paraphrased as an additional means to protect their
identity, as we did in the present research.
In the next section, we describe in detail the two-stage multi-method
design that we implemented in our study. The potential of each of these
stages will be illustrated by using concrete examples from this study.
4. First methodological stage: narrative and visual analyses of
YouTubers’ health video content
Scholars have pointed out that research data, including verbal and
visual material, are culturally and socio-historically rooted (Murray,
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
5
2003; Rose, 2016). Research material stemming from YouTubers’ con-
tent is no exception. Based upon this premise, the rst stage of our
multi-method design implemented narrative and visual analyses. This
stage paid particular attention to the analysis of meanings attached to
health practices in order to understand ways in which these were shaped
by YouTubers’ activity and the social media culture. We focused on the
verbal and visual dimensions of such content to examine who were the
main characters in YouTubers’ health videos; what was being said,
performed and displayed, and how such content was performed.
4.1. Narrative analysis: YouTubers’ accounts viewed as stories
The narrative approach has been used in health psychology to un-
derstand experiences of health and illness. It is based on the premise that
individuals have the need to make sense of their world and themselves
through storytelling or narratives, which can be personal, interpersonal
and social (Murray, 2003). On YouTube, YouTubers tend to structure
their accounts as ‘stories’ using self-presentation and self-mediation
communication styles (Chou et al., 2011). The narrative approach
seemed particularly appropriate in our study, given this mode of
delivering autobiographical content (A. Harris et al., 2014; Raun, 2018).
Inspired by Murray (2003), we conducted a narrative analysis across
a selection of fteen videos. A descriptive phase was rst conducted to
identify the parts and plots of each story. A more interpretative phase
was then applied to examine what content was presented and how the
video narratives were structured:
−The descriptive phase consisted of a summary of ‘life-chapters’ told by
YouTubers. Here, we identied main overarching plots and divided
them according to a ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘ending’.
−The interpretive phase was implemented to highlight which health
topics were explained by YouTubers as well as their narrative
structure: the logic and overall tone; the relationship between per-
sonal, interpersonal and sociocultural dimensions of narratives. In
this process, we examined how experiences told by YouTubers
related to broader societal logics.
4.2. Visual analyses: YouTubers’ ‘visual narrative compositional style’
Following Rose (2016), visual data analysis needs to be tailored to
the research material’s own technological, compositional, and social
modalities, along with the research goal. On YouTube, storytelling is
constructed through the narrative dimension, as well as music and visual
editing (Scolari and Fraticelli, 2017). YouTubers’ audio-visual narra-
tives are performances aimed at being delivered to an audience (Barker,
2019) following a script and conveying a specic cinematic style. To
address the staged character of this content, we conducted an analysis
aimed at the understanding of what we refer to as YouTubers’ ‘visual
narrative compositional style’. This was achieved by rst identifying the
main visual themes and by then examining the narrative structure and
compositional style of these themes:
−Inductive thematic analysis: We drew upon ‘polytextual thematic
analysis’ to conduct an inductive thematic analysis to classify main
recurring visual themes (Gleeson, 2011). Gleeson proposes a sys-
tematic approach to visual analysis of static data that is highly
similar to the inductive thematic analysis of verbal data used in
health psychology (Braun and Clarke, 2006). She denes it as ‘the
analysis of visual data that looks across sets of images and tries to
capture the recurring patterns in the analysis, both in terms of form
and content’ (2011, p. 319). In our study, we applied a
frame-by-frame procedure, previously applied in similar methodo-
logical approaches for visual data (e.g. (Nassauer and Legewie,
2021).
−Analysing the visual narrative compositional style: This analytical pro-
cedure drew upon theoretical premises stemming from lm studies
(Sikov, 2020), psychology (Rose, 2016) and sociology (Knoblauch,
2009). Its aim was to address common challenges related to video
analysis. These included the combination of visual narration, music
and audio adds-on (Schnettler and Raab, 2008), as well as the
analysis of meanings attached to visual content within a social media
culture (Anthony et al., 2013; Pereira et al., 2018). We elaborated a
tailored grid to analyse YouTubers’ visual narrative style through the
identication of: the characters in each video-shot and how these
were portrayed (characters); the staging or mise en scene including
how the setting was displayed (setting) and, nally, what the char-
acters were doing throughout a whole video sequence (health prac-
tices). Additionally, attention was paid to compositional elements
constituting the lming style and the visual logic (shot’s goal and
scale; editing techniques; on-camera vs. off-camera look). Here below
(Table 1), we summarise main elements included for the visual
narrative compositional style, once the main visual themes were
identied:
In this rst stage, the narrative and visual analyses echoed one
another, as they converged to point out strikingly similar yet, comple-
mentary results that we exemplify here below.
4.3. Illustrating the potential of our narrative and visual approach
This section illustrates the potential of the rst stage by presenting
preliminary ndings based on the narrative and visual analyses of one of
the videos selected. In this video YouTuber M
2
is the main character,
presenting practices to lead a healthier life by providing advice on the
implementation of nutrition habits.
The narratives are characterised by an overall optimistic tone. The
overarching plot of leading a healthier life is constructed throughout the
video: in the opening scene YouTuber M describes her ‘unhealthy’ past
self (beginning of the story), who implemented specic lifestyle changes
(middle of the story) to feel healthier and happier and has now achieved
the desired results (end of the story). Her future-oriented progressive
Table 1
Analytical grid to analyse narrative and compositional elements of YouTubers’
visual content.
Dimension Elements Indicator
Visual narrative Characters YouTuber as main character; presence of
other people or pet; physical appearance,
make up and clothing style.
Setting Colour palette, objects and things, space
layout, furniture, decoration.
Performed
practices
Food preparation; practicing yoga;
running; house-cleaning.
Compositional
style
Shot’s goal Decoration setting; ground for action;
graphic display of information (titles and
links).
Shot’s scale Long shot; mid-shot; close-ups.
Editing Changes in speed; music-additions; video-
trailer; visual adds-on; sound effects;
colour ltering.
Characters’
glances
On-camera vs. off-camera look
2
A note on gender pronouns: as earlier stated, YouTubers’ socio-
demographic data are very difcult to nd. In our sample, YouTubers did not
explicitly make reference to their gender. In this article, we made assumptions
on YouTubers gender identity based on the content of their videos, while taking
into account the digital identity of the researchers (females). We are aware of
the fact that this lack of information constitutes a limitation that ought to be
better explored in future research. For the purpose of this study, YouTubers in
our sample are referred to as “she/her”.
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
6
narrative structure is meant spontaneous and authentic, fostering a
horizontal relationship with viewers.
Regarding the visual dimension, a mid-shot shows YouTuber M
facing straight to the camera, speaking to an audience from her home
setting. The latter consists of a bright, colourful yet uncluttered and
sober space, suggesting that healthy behaviours can lead to a new life-
style. YouTuber M displays a youthful look engaging her body. The
person wears clean and apparently new sport clothes, light make up, and
tidy hair.
Health practices are constructed through meanings involved in both,
narrative and visual dimensions. More specically, as the video starts,
YouTuber M is in her private bedroom, sitting on her bed. Through a
mid-shot of herself glancing on-camera, she explains that a few years
ago, she had started a journey towards a healthier lifestyle and that she
has progressively been improving different areas of her life, until
reaching happiness and wellbeing. She further develops several sub-
stories, talking about an array of personal experiences. For example, she
addresses eating practices to show that she enjoys preparing her own
food since she has avoided ‘rened sugars’ and ‘processed food’. She
describes that this eating practice makes her feel healthier as well as a
better person.
As the story unfolds, YouTuber M appears through a mid-shot alone
in her clean, organised, pastel-colour kitchen, preparing a vegetarian
meal. An uplifting music accompanies food preparation stages, and fast-
forward editing leads the viewer to quickly see the nished colourful
vegetable-based meal, suggesting what is meant by this YouTuber as
‘healthy’ eating. Here, the narrative dimension enhances YouTuber M’s
purpose of becoming healthier through the food she eats, how she pre-
pares it, how she eats it, and how that eating that food makes her look
and feel (Images 1 and 2).
At the end of the video, this YouTuber encourages her audience to
share their opinion in the video’s comment section, and to afliate with
other social media channels presented through graphic links and adds-
on. While the video has started with a specic focus on her personal
experience, highlighted by a specic terminology (framing this as ‘in my
experience’, ‘my journey’, or ‘personally’), YouTuber M progressively
engages the viewer in her speech through wordings such as ‘you can
change your life’ or ‘you will feel amazing’. The closing scene uses an
interactive tone with her viewers to elicit their reactions and comments.
Throughout the video, broader societal values of self-responsibility
and self-care underpin YouTuber M’s personal story. YouTuber M
speaks about a specic reward that can be achieved by following her
advice, that consists of ‘reaching happiness’ alongside a health-ier life.
Self-improvement constitutes another implicit logic constructed at
narrative and visual levels. This logic is conveyed by showing seemingly
simple, easy, and effortless ways to implement healthy practices, namely
based on individual will.
Based on this analysis, we showed that narrative and visual analyses
can lead researchers to produce rened interpretations on YouTubers’
videos content from a critical health psychology perspective. This rst
methodological stage has the potential to provide insight on ways in
which YouTubers’ videos contribute to shape health and health prac-
tices via YouTube. Moreover, it allows for the study of healthism as
intimately linked to the moral value of ‘becoming a good person’,
alongside positive states of mind (‘being healthy’ =‘being happy’). An
exploratory analysis was conducted through a second methodological
stage to support our qualitative interpretations.
5. Second methodological stage: computer-based procedures of
video exploration
The second stage of the multi-method design involved the use of
computer-based methods applied to transcriptions of the speech content
from YouTubers’ videos. In this section, we describe the type of analysis
that can be conducted to complement the rst stage with two examples:
(1) How YouTubers talk in their videos, by quantifying the verbal con-
tent of their full set of videos; and (2) how this analysis can be rened to
understand temporal aspects of verbal content production.
As the starting point, used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
(LIWC) tool, specic to the linguistic study of psychological dimensions
(Pennebaker et al., 2015). We employed the LIWC2015, the most recent
version of this tool, to analyse speech transcripts from 50 YouTubers (50
videos per YouTuber). LIWC2015 uses an internal default dictionary,
which contains a list of categories and their corresponding words. Each
of the LIWC2015 categories is composed of a list of dictionary words that
come from a set of 6400 words and word stems. For example, the pos-
itive emotion category (‘Posemo’) has 620 words (e.g., love, nice, sweet,
etc.) while the negative emotion category (‘Negemo’) has 744 words (e.
g., hurt, nasty, ugly, etc.
Based on the total number of existing words in each category of the
transcript, we calculated the percentages of all LIWC2015 categories.
This value represents the sum of matched keywords for the total number
of words that a YouTuber produced in their videos. The outputs of
LIWC2015 on the downloaded transcripts summarised YouTubers’
verbal content with respect to a number of relevant linguistic categories
in psychology research (Pennebaker et al., 2015). Image 3 shows, for
example, that the rst person of the singular (‘I’) is used more frequently
than the second person of the singular (‘You’), but also more frequently
than the rst person of the plural (‘We’). Furthermore, it shows that
positive emotions (‘Posemo’) are more frequently expressed that nega-
tive ones (‘Negemo’). Similarly, the present tense is used more often
compared to the past or future. These results are interesting since they
add value to ndings of the rst methodological stage of the analysis.
First, they point out a tendency by YouTubers to narrate from a personal
perspective and engage the viewer through interactivity (‘I’ and ‘You’).
Second, based on their wording, YouTubers’ narratives are characterised
by an optimistic tone of health and wellbeing. This kind of analysis is a
rst step used in our computer-based methods to explore the linguistic
content of videos.
Image 1. Figure inspired by YouTuber’s practice of ‘healthy eating’.
Image 2. Figure inspired by YouTuber’s practice on ‘staying hydrated’.
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
7
As second illustration, given the temporality (video length) of speech
transcripts, we combined the LIWC2015 categories with the timeline to
analyse how YouTubers produced verbal content. To do this, we calcu-
lated the distribution of the corresponding words of LIWC2015
categories over the video length. In Image 4, we provide examples of
LIWC2015 categories including pronouns (‘I’, ‘We’, ‘You’), time orien-
tations (‘FocusPast’, ‘FocusPresent’, ‘FocusFuture’), and emotions
(‘Posemo’, ‘Negemo’). Image 4 (a) shows that ‘We’ and ‘I’ are used more
Image 3. Percentage of some LIWC2015 categories in YouTube speech transcriptions.
Image 4. Examples of LIWC2015 categories in timeline with (a) pronouns, (b) time orientations, and (c) emotion.
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
8
commonly than ‘You’ at the beginning of videos. In contrast, ‘You’ is
more frequently used compared to ‘I’ and ‘We’ in the video conclusions.
Image 4 (b) highlights that a focus in the future is more frequent towards
the end of the videos. Image 4 (c) stresses that positive emotions are
more frequent towards the end of the videos. These results show com-
mon speaking styles among YouTubers, who craft their messages to have
an effect on their audiences.
While LIWC-based analysis of YouTube video blogs is not new (Biel
et al., 2013), its application to health lifestyle videos of YouTubers
brings a novel angle. This second stage supported our narrative and
visual analyses by shedding light upon main features characterising
videos, such as: the specic use of words throughout a temporal
framework, the overall optimistic tone and the trends associated to
pronoun use. Through automatised methods of video exploration, out-
comes stemming from this method enhanced interpretations regarding
narrative and visual analyses, bringing an added value to our research.
From a critical health psychology perspective, contextualisation of such
content is nonetheless required. Therefore, computer-based analyses
were interpreted in light of the rst stage.
6. Discussion
This article aimed at providing a methodological framework to
analyse lifestyle health-related videos displayed by YouTubers from a
critical health psychology perspective. To do so, we focused on the
analysis of verbal and visual dimensions of YouTubers’ video content.
Also, we reected upon potential solutions to key methodological
challenges that we encountered in data collection and analysis. More-
over, we illustrated the potential of our methodological approach.
Our rst contribution consisted of the integration of a critical health
psychology perspective to examine YouTubers’ lifestyle and health
video content. To do so, we conceptualised YouTubers’ staged practices
as rooted in the social media culture, part of a broader societal context.
We drew upon social practices theory (Blue et al., 2016; del Rio Carral
and Lyons, 2020) and recent work that dened YouTubers as a new form
of labour structured by social media’s specic values and affordances
(Khamis et al., 2017). Through the study of contextualised health
practices and their meanings, our framework has the potential to
examine the articulations between personal narratives and sociocultural
discourses. It suggested that the media culture is deeply rooted within
specic logics that promote forms of individualism and self-surveillance
(Ashman et al., 2018; Chae, 2019; Khamis et al., 2017). In line with this,
recent work in critical health psychology (Riley et al., 2017, 2018) led us
to examine healthism (Crawford, 1980), a dominant trend where health
is oriented towards neoliberal logics.
Our second contribution was the development of a tailored multi-
method design. We showed the need to integrate an active research
posture in the interpretation of data (del Rio Carral, 2014; Finlay and
Gough, 2003; Vygotski, 1999). In this context, it was imperative to
introduce reexivity in the exercise of ‘zooming out’ from our own
contemporary societal values to adopt a certain distance with regard to
our topic of investigation. Researchers are therefore invited to become
‘bricoleurs’ to be aware of epistemological, ontological and theoretical
decisions taken throughout the research process (Chamberlain, 2000;
Willig and Stainton-Rogers, 2008). Ethical issues on participant consent,
anonymisation, study withdrawal, and copyright are still subject to
debate, yet central to study of YouTubers’ activity. In our study, we
presented practical suggestions to address common challenges. Our re-
ections constitute a rst step for further development.
In addition, we addressed the complex multi-layered data involved in
lifestyle YouTubers’ activity. We examined what health practices were
presented and how such health practices were displayed. This study
provided insight to adapt existing methods of data analysis to go beyond
video description. While important, descriptive analyses are not suf-
cient to understand how health practices and other health-related phe-
nomena are constructed and experienced (Willig, 2000).
The rst methodological stage addressed self-mediation, a major
feature of YouTubers’ style of communication (Khamis et al., 2017) by
examining accounts as ‘stories’ (Murray, 2003). This focus was com-
plemented by the analysis of a ‘visual narrative compositional style’
through a tailored grid. Social practices’ theory (Blue et al., 2016;
Reckwitz, 2002; Shove et al., 2012) has underlined the importance of
taking into account settings, objects and materiality and our grid con-
stitutes an attempt to achieve this.
The second methodological stage, based on computer procedures of
video exploration, was helpful to shed light on YouTubers’ linguistic
content to support our qualitative analyses. More particularly, it allowed
us to further explore the overall optimistic tone of YouTubers’ speech
with regard to health, for example through the predominance of words
referring to positive emotions. Based on this kind of illustration, the
second stage underlined the pertinency of qualitative interpretations
associated to our narrative and visual analyses.
Our multi-method design has certain limitations, namely with regard
to the epistemological articulation between the qualitative and
computational stages. Additionally, our methodology fails to consider
viewers’ comments. Despite these limitations, our approach can be
useful to analyse health content in YouTube. While it remains evident
that no ‘one-size-ts-all’ methods can be dened (Brinkmann, 2015),
our contributions may inspire health psychologists interested in how
social media are shaping our understandings of health in everyday life.
This study has several research implications, as it has highlighted
articulations between healthism (R. Crawford, 1980) and motivational
and positive discourses on self-development. This is in line with recent
poststructuralist work arguing that individuals who engage in health
behaviours are viewed as ‘good citizens’ in industrialised Western so-
cieties (Gill, 2007). ‘Staying healthy’ has become a purpose in life that
encourages individuals to become self-responsible, often through
self-monitoring (K. Crawford et al., 2015; Lupton and Smith, 2018).
Critical scholars in health psychology have pointed out the potentially
negative repercussions of such discourses upon people’s overall well-
being (Riley et al., 2018). Hence, we need to better investigate the po-
tential consequences for those who fail to identify to these logics (Riley
et al., 2018) as well as for those who engage in counter-practices (Raun,
2018; Riley et al., 2017). The complex interactions between healthism
and neoliberalism are central processes dening our times. YouTube
appears as a major platform producing and reproducing such in-
teractions. Research perspectives could focus on these interactions from
lay populations’ point of view. Indeed, the commercial yet personal
relationship that YouTubers engage with their viewers is cultivated
through forms of consumer-participation, where the latter are invited to
comment and subscribe to YouTubers’ channels (Khan, 2017). The role
of viewers and subscribers’ comments in the co-construction of such
culture (Bevan, 2017; Khamis et al., 2017; Marwick, 2015) also deserves
attention in future research, such as how this may be gendered (Bevan,
2017). These directions would contribute to the understanding of ideals
of a ‘healthy’ life and how these are reshaping experiences around
health and wellbeing.
Authors’ contributions
The third author conducted the video selection, under the supervi-
sion of the rst author, and contacted the included YouTubers for their
consent to participate to our study. She helped with practical and ethical
issues raised by the study. The second author conducted a revision of the
video selection and led the rst methodological analytical stage, under
the supervision of the rst author, with the support of the third author.
The theoretical framework and methodology was developed by the rst
and fth author, with the support of second and third author on pratical
issues regarding analysis and methodological design. The fourth author
conducted the second methodological analytical stage, supervised by the
fth author and supported by the second and third authors. The multi-
method design was further developed, dened, modied and adapted
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
9
by the rst, second, third, fourth and fth authors in a collaborative
way.
Conict of interest statement
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
We sincerely thank Paul Walther for helping us illustrate YouTubers’
health practices through his drawings. Inspired by the videos, these
images were created in order to protect YouTubers’ identities. We also
thank Hailey Sani, a YouTuber who took part in this study andwho
wished to be explicitly acknowledged. This study was supported by the
Swiss National Science Foundation, SPARK programme [research grant
number CRSK-1_190387].
References
Abidin, C., 2013. Cyber-BFFs*: assessing women’s ‘perceived interconnectedness’ in
Singapore’s commercial lifestyle blog industry *Best Friends Forever. Global Media
J.: Australian Edition 7 (1). https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications
/cyber-bffs-assessing-womens-perceived-interconnectedness-in-singa.
Abidin, C., 2015. Communicative ❤ Intimacies: Inuencers and Perceived
Interconnectedness, vol. 8. Ada New Media. https://doi.org/10.7264/N3MW2FFG.
About CC Licenses. (n.d.). Creative commons. Retrieved 17 November 2020, from https:
//creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/.
Anthony, L., Kim, Y., Findlater, L., 2013. Analyzing user-generated youtube videos to
understand touchscreen use by people with motor impairments. Proceedings of the
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 1223–1232. https://
doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466158.
Ashman, R., Patterson, A., Brown, S., 2018. ‘Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe’:
digital autopreneurs in a neoliberal world. J. Bus. Res. 92, 474–483. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.055.
Barker, K.K., 2019. Lay pharmacovigilance and the dramatization of risk:
uoroquinolone Harm on YouTube. J. Health Soc. Behav. 60 (4), 509–524. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0022146519888242.
Berger, P.L., Luckmann, T., 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge (Anchor).
Bevan, A., 2017. How to make victory rolls: gender, memory, and the counterarchive in
YouTube pinup hair tutorials. Fem. Media Stud. 17 (5), 755–773. https://doi.org/
10.1080/14680777.2017.1298645.
Biel, J.-I., Tsiminaki, V., Dines, J., Gatica-Perez, D., 2013. Hi YouTube! Personality
impressions and verbal content in social video. Proceedings of the 15th ACM on
International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 119–126. https://doi.org/
10.1145/2522848.2522877.
Blue, S., Shove, E., Carmona, C., Kelly, M.P., 2016. Theories of practice and public
health: understanding (un)healthy practices. Crit. Publ. Health 26 (1), 36–50.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2014.980396.
Braun, V., Clarke, V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual. Res. Psychol. 3
(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
Brinkmann, S., 2015. Perils and potentials in qualitative psychology. Integr. Psychol.
Behav. Sci. 49 (2), 162–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9293-z.
British Psychological Society, 2017. Ethics guidelines for internet-mediated research.
Leicester: Author. www.bps.org.uk/publications/policy-and-guidelines/research-gui
delines-policy-documents/research-guidelines-poli.
Brotsky, S.R., Giles, D., 2007. Inside the “pro-ana” community: a covert online
participant observation. Eat. Disord. 15 (2), 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/
10640260701190600.
Burgess, J., 2012. YouTube and the formalisation of amateur media. In: Hunter, D.,
Lobato, R., Thomas, J., Richardson, M. (Eds.), Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and
Legal Perspectives. Routledge, pp. 53–58. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/47272/.
Burr, V., 2015. Social Constructionism. Routledge.
Carrotte, E.R., Vella, A.M., Lim, M.S., 2015. Predictors of “liking” three types of health
and tness-related content on social media: a cross-sectional study. J. Med. Internet
Res. 17 (8), e205 https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4803.
Chae, J., 2019. YouTube makeup tutorials reinforce postfeminist beliefs through social
comparison. Media Psychol. 1–23 https://doi.org/10.1080/
15213269.2019.1679187.
Chamberlain, K., 2000. Methodolatry and qualitative health research. J. Health Psychol.
5 (3), 285–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/135910530000500306.
Chamberlain, K., Cain, T., Sheridan, J., Dupuis, A., 2011. Pluralisms in qualitative
research: from multiple methods to integrated methods. Qual. Res. Psychol. 8 (2),
151–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2011.572730.
Chou, W.-Y.S., Hunt, Y., Folkers, A., Augustson, E., 2011. Cancer survivorship in the age
of YouTube and social media: a narrative analysis. J. Med. Internet Res. 13 (1),
e1569. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1569.
Crawford, R., 1980. Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. Int. J. Health
Serv. 10 (3), 365–388. https://doi.org/10.2190/3H2H-3XJN-3KAY-G9NY.
Crawford, K., Lingel, J., Karppi, T., 2015. Our metrics, ourselves: a hundred years of self-
tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device. Eur. J. Cult. Stud.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549415584857.
Creative Commons Legal Code. (n.d.). Retrieved 17 November 2020, from https://creati
vecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.
del Rio Carral, M., 2014. Focusing on ‘A day in the life’: an activity-based method for the
qualitative analysis of psychological phenomena. Qual. Res. Psychol. 11 (3),
298–315.
del Rio Carral, M., Lyons, A., 2020. Embodying health behaviours in everyday life: the
social and gendered practices of female senior managers. Psychol. Health 1–19.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2020.1743292.
del Rio Carral, M., Santiago-Delefosse, M., 2014. Toward a Cultural Health Psychology:
Taking Researcher’s and Participants’ Activity into Consideration. European Health
Psychology Society. https://serval.unil.ch/notice/serval:BIB_B353E91B4887.
Dreon, O., Kerper, R.M., Landis, J., 2011. Digital storytelling: a tool for teaching and
learning in the YouTube generation. Middle Sch. J. 42 (5), 4–10.
Engestr¨
om, Y., Miettinen, R., Punam¨
aki, R.-L. (Eds.), 1999. Perspectives on Activity
Theory, 1st ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/
CBO9780511812774.
Finlay, L., Gough, B. (Eds.), 2003. Reexivity: A Practical Guide for Researchers in
Health and Social Sciences. Wiley-Blackwell.
Gamson, J., 2011. The unwatched life is not worth living: the elevation of the ordinary in
celebrity culture. Theories and Methodologies 126 (4), 1061–1069. https://doi.org/
10.1632/pmla.2011.126.4.1061.
García-Rapp, F., 2017. Popularity markers on YouTube’s attention economy: the case of
Bubzbeauty. Celebr. Stud. 8 (2), 228–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/
19392397.2016.1242430.
García-Rapp, F., Roca-Cuberes, C., 2017. Being an Online Celebrity: Norms and
Expectations of YouTube’s Beauty Community. First Monday. https://doi.org/
10.5210/fm.v22i7.7788.
Germain, J., Harris, J., Mackay, S., Maxwell, C., 2018. Why should we use online
research methods? Four doctoral health student perspectives. Qual. Health Res. 28
(10), 1650–1657. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732317721698.
Giddens, A., 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
University of California Press.
Gill, R., 2007. Postfeminist media culture: elements of a sensibility. Eur. J. Cult. Stud. 10
(2), 147–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549407075898.
Gleeson, K., 2011. Polytextual thematic analysis for visual data—pinning down the
analytic. In: Reavey, P. (Ed.), Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting
Images in Qualitative Research. Psychology Press, pp. 314–329.
Hargreaves, T., 2011. Practice-ing behaviour change: applying social practice theory to
pro-environmental behaviour change. J. Consum. Cult. 11 (1), 79–99. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1469540510390500.
Harris, J., 2019. A Mixed Methods Study Examining the Role of Professional YouTubers
In Young People’s Health Behaviours in the UK: Implications For Health
Interventions. Doctoral thesis. John Moores University. http://researchonline.ljmu.
ac.uk/id/eprint/10938.
Harris, A., Kelly, S.E., Wyatt, S., 2014. Autobiologies on YouTube: narratives of direct-to-
consumer genetic testing. New Genet. Soc. 33 (1), 60–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/
14636778.2014.884456.
Hou, M., 2019. Social media celebrity and the institutionalization of YouTube.
Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25
(3), 534–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517750368.
Huh, J., Liu, L.S., Neogi, T., Inkpen, K., Pratt, W., 2014. Health vlogs as social support for
chronic illness management. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. 21 (4), 1–31.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2630067.
Janesick, V.J., 1994. The dance of qualitative research design: metaphor, methodolatry,
and meaning. In: Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, Inc,
pp. 209–219.
Johansson, M., 2017. Youtube. In: Bublitz, W., Jucker, A.H., Schneider, K.P. (Eds.),
Pragmatics of Social Media. De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 173–200. https://doi.org/
10.1515/9783110431070.
Kaur-Gill, S., Dutta, M.J., 2017. Digital ethnography. In: The International Encyclopedia
of Communication Research Methods. American Cancer Society, pp. 1–10. https://
doi.org/10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0271.
Khamis, S., Ang, L., Welling, R., 2017. Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of
social media inuencers. Celebr. Stud. 8 (2), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/
19392397.2016.1218292.
Khan, M.L., 2017. Social media engagement: what motivates user participation and
consumption on YouTube? Comput. Hum. Behav. 66, 236–247. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.chb.2016.09.024.
Kim, J., 2012. The institutionalization of YouTube: from user-generated content to
professionally generated content. Media Cult. Soc. 34 (1), 53–67. https://doi.org/
10.1177/0163443711427199.
Knoblauch, H., 2006. Videography. Focused ethnography and video analysis. In:
Knoblauch, H., Schnettler, B., Raab, J., Soeffner, G. (Eds.), Video-Analysis.
Methodological Aspects of Interpretive Audiovisual Analysis in Social Research
(Peter Lang).
Knoblauch, H., 2009. Social constructivism and the three levels of video analysis and
videography. In: Kissmann, U. (Ed.), Video Interaction Analysis: Methods and
Methodology, pp. 181–198 (Peter Lang).
Lange, P.G., 2007. Publicly private and privately public: social networking on YouTube.
J. Computer-Mediated Commun. 13 (1), 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-
6101.2007.00400.x.
M. del Río Carral et al.
Methods in Psychology 5 (2021) 100051
10
Lash, S., 2006. Dialectic of information? A response to Taylor. Inf. Commun. Soc. 9 (5),
572–581. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180600965542.
Legewie, N., Nassauer, A., 2018. YouTube, google, facebook: 21st century online video
research and research Ethics. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative
Social Research 19 (3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.3.3130. Article 3.
Loi f´
ed´
erale sur le droit d’auteur et les droits voisins, 1992. Pub. L. No. 231.1. RO 1993
1798 RO 40. https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/classied-compilation/19920251/.
Lupton, D., Smith, G.J.D., 2018. ‘A much better person’: the agential capacities of self-
tracking practices. In: Ajana, B. (Ed.), Metric Culture. Emerald Publishing Limited,
pp. 57–75. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78743-289-520181004.
Lyons, A.C., Chamberlain, K., 2006. Health Psychology: A Critical Introduction.
Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, J., 2010. Ambiguity, oscillation and disorder: online ethnography and the
making of culture. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 (3),
1–22. https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v2i3.1598.
Marwick, A.E., 2015. You may know me from YouTube: (Micro-)Celebrity in social
media. In: Marshall, P.D., Redmond, S. (Eds.), A Companion to Celebrity. John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd, pp. 333–350. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118475089.ch18.
Meier, P.S., Warde, A., Holmes, J., 2018. All drinking is not equal: how a social practice
theory lens could enhance public health research on alcohol and other health
behaviours. Addiction 113 (2), 206–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13895.
Murray, M., 2003. Narrative psychology and narrative analysis. In: Qualitative Research
in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in Methodology and Design. American
Psychological Association, pp. 95–112. https://doi.org/10.1037/10595-006.
Nassauer, A., Legewie, N.M., 2021. Video data analysis: a methodological frame for a
novel research trend. Socio. Methods Res. 50 (1), 135–174. https://doi.org/
10.1177/0049124118769093.
Norris, S., 2012. Multimodal interaction analysis. In: Chapelle, C.A. (Ed.), The
Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, wbeal0814. https://
doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0814.
Patterson, A.N., 2018. YouTube generated video clips as qualitative research data: one
researcher’s reections on the process. Qual. Inq. 24 (10), 759–767. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1077800418788107.
Pennebaker, J.W., Boyd, R.L., Jordan, K., Blackburn, K., 2015. The Development and
Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. http
s://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/31333.
Pereira, S., Moura, P. F. R. de, Fillol, J., 2018. The YouTubers phenomenon: what makes
YouTube stars so popular for young people? Fonseca. J. Commun. 17, 107–123.
https://doi.org/10.14201/fjc201817107123.
Ratwatte, P., Mattacola, E., 2019. An exploration of ‘tspiration’ content on YouTube
and its impacts on consumers. J. Health Psychol. 1359105319854168 https://doi.
org/10.1177/1359105319854168.
Raun, T., 2018. Capitalizing intimacy: new subcultural forms of micro-celebrity
strategies and affective labour on YouTube. Convergence. The International Journal
of Research into New Media Technologies 24 (1), 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1354856517736983.
Reckwitz, A., 2002. Toward a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist
theorizing. Eur. J. Soc. Theor 5 (2), 243–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/
13684310222225432.
Riley, S., Evans, A., Elliott, S., Rice, C., Marecek, J., 2017. A critical review of
postfeminist sensibility. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 11 (12),
e12367. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12367.
Riley, S., Evans, A., Robson, M., 2018. Postfeminism and Health: Critical Psychology and
Media Perspectives. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315648613.
Rose, G., 2016. Visual Methodologies: an Introduction to Researching with Visual
Materials. SAGE.
Sacks, H., 1992. Doing ‘being ordinary’. In: Jefferson, G., Schegloff, E.A. (Eds.), Lectures
on Conversation, vol. 18. Blackwell, pp. 327–336.
Schnettler, B., 2013. Notes on the history and development of visual research methods
[Application/pdf]. InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology 4. https://doi.
org/10.2390/INDI-V4-I1-77, 673 kB.
Schnettler, B., Raab, J., 2008. Interpretative visual analysis. Developments, state of the
art and pending problems. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative
Social Research 9 (3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-9.3.1149. Article 3.
Schütz, A., 1967. The phenomenology of the social world [1932]. In: Calhoun, C.,
Gerteis, J., Moody, J., Pfaff, S., Virk, I. (Eds.), Contemporary Sociological Theory.
Scolari, C.A., Fraticelli, D., 2017. The case of the top Spanish YouTubers: emerging media
subjects and discourse practices in the new media ecology. Convergence 25 (3),
496–515. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517721807.
Shove, E., Pantzar, M., Watson, M., 2012. The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life
and How it Changes. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446250655.
Sikov, E., 2020. An Introduction. In: Film Studies, second ed. Columbia University Press.
Thomson, L., 2017. “In my humble opinion…”: serious YouTubers’ self-presentations,
roles, and authority. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and
Technology 54 (1), 811–813. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2017.14505401167.
Vygotski, L.S., 1997. [Thought and language] Pens´
ee et langage (La Dispute).
Vygotski, L.S., 1999. La signication historique de la crise en psychologie. Delachaux et
Niestl´
e.
Vygotski, L.S., 2003. Conscience, Inconscient, ´
Emotions (La Dispute).
Willig, C., 2000. A discourse-dynamic approach to the study of subjectivity in health
psychology: theory & psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354300104006.
Willig, C., 2001. Qualitative Research in Psychology: A Practical Guide to Theory and
Method. OUP, Buckingham.
Willig, C., Stainton-Rogers, W. (Eds.), 2008. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research
in Psychology. SAGE Publications Ltd.
YouTube, 2019a. Creative commons. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer
/2797468?.
YouTube, 2019b. Terms of use applicable in the European economic area and
Switzerland. https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms.
M. del Río Carral et al.
