Making sense of “superbugs” on YouTube: A storytelling approach

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest challenges facing the world. With the rapid growth of social media, YouTube has become an influential social media platform providing publics with expert health knowledge. This article explores how antimicrobial resistance is communicated on YouTube. Drawing on qualitative media analyses of the most viewed YouTube videos 2016–2020, we identify seven different genres and two main storytelling approaches, personalized and fictionalized storytelling, used to make sense of antimicrobial resistance and its complexities. The study contributes new knowledge about YouTube as a platform for health communication and the types of videos about antimicrobial resistance that gets most traffic. This is useful, not the least for public health experts working to improve communication strategies that target hard-to-reach media publics.