“It’s something you don’t talk about": miscarriage testimonies on youtube
Abstract
Objective: To analyze the content of testimonial videos about pregnancy loss in Spanish on YouTube, so as to explore whether such narratives are framed in relation to the modern or postmodern biomedical logic of this experience as formulated by Frank and Bauman.
Methods: Systematic search of videos in Spanish from 2011 to May 2019, using the following inclusion criteria: contain the key words miscarriage or pregnancy loss in their title and have had more than 100,000 views on YouTube since their publication. To enable further content analysis, the videos were viewed to detail the characteristics of the publication channel in each case and to catalog their contents in terms of reasons for talking about the experience, the time chosen to tell the story, interaction with followers, the stages in the narrative, and the language used.
Results: We identified nine YouTubers that met the inclusion criteria, comprising a total of ten videos. Only two of the nine channels focused exclusively on motherhood. The stories are inscribed in a postmodern biomedical logic, due to the clear need to explain the traumatic event online, the recognition of the grief phase, and the limited use of survival language.
Conclusions: This study shows that the need to talk about the experience online is motivated by a decision to make the experience visible and offer support to other women. The results of this study may be useful to nursing professionals whose clinical practice involves caring for women who have suffered pregnancy loss.
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