ABSTRACT
This article examines ongoing responses to natural disasters such as bushfires, climate change and COVID-19 as articulated in various videos produced for, and distributed via, YouTube. It focuses on channels and content creators that promote ecologically mindful alternative everyday practices explicitly driven by permaculture principles and accompanying notions of resilience as well as individual and community self-reliance. While many of these videos are ostensibly concerned with instructing viewers in small-scale practical food production at a household or small business level, they also mark a renewed critical interest in everyday practices and domestic space as a site of social and cultural change through alternative ways of living. The research employs analytical approaches and frameworks drawn from the disciplines of cultural and media studies, specifically the former’s interest in the notion of ‘everyday life’ and the latter’s engagement with digital platforms such as YouTube. I argue that the permaculture movement’s success on YouTube is indicative of the ways in which the environmental concerns of pre-digital social movements might be adapted to the unique affordances and modes of address of platform media like YouTube and, in particular, its signature form of the vlog. Platform media like YouTube accordingly deserve further scholarly research and a similar level of attention as given to more traditional media forms such as print, film and television in terms of how they might positively enable conceptual and practical responses to ecological crisis at both personal and community levels.
ABSTRACT
ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationship , if any, COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders had on mental health outcomes for undergraduate students.ParticipantsThis study was comprised of 138 students, all of which were recruited from a single four-year college in the Midwest.MethodsA pre-/post-test comparative design was adopted and was leveraged to capture data regarding students' experiences before and after the shelter-in-place orders were enacted to determine if there was a marked effect between the pre-virus condition and the situation after stay at home orders went into effect.ResultsPaired sample t-test were conducted to determine whether the mental health outcomes of depression, anxiety and stress were significantly changed from before to after COVID-19 shelter in place disorders. While anxiety and stress scores were revealed no significant difference, significantly greater depression was revealed after COVID-19.ConclusionOverall, the results of this study highlight the need for colleges to be aware of the mental health toll that the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders may take on their students. Though this toll registered only directly in depression, there remains significant reasons to believe the situation may also affect stress and anxiety regardless of the absence of evidence for these factors in this study. There remains much to be done in assessing the ultimate impact of the pandemic on students' mental health.