Studying Together Apart: Study-With-Me Stream Comment Cultures Before and After COVID-19

Abstract Book of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education, Teaching and Learning

Year: 2026

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Studying Together Apart: Study-With-Me Stream Comment Cultures Before and After COVID-19

Ivana Cimermanova

ABSTRACT:

The rapid growth of study-with-me livestreams on platforms such as YouTube has changed solitary studying into a collective practice. While these streams are often framed as productivity tools, their comment sections become micro-communities where students articulate stress, motivation, and belonging. This paper presents a comparative digital ethnography of study-with-me stream comment cultures before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on qualitative thematic and discursive analysis of comments posted during two periods (2018–2019 and 2022–2023), the study examines how students publicly narrate academic pressure, self-discipline, and emotional struggle. The article highlights how viewers use these environments to negotiate productivity norms and cope with educational stress. Preliminary findings suggest a significant shift in tone and function. Pre-pandemic comments predominantly emphasize goal-setting, achievement. In contrast, post-pandemic discourse reveals increased expressions of burnout, loneliness, and vulnerability. The study claims that during and after COVID-19, study-with-me streams have changed from being productivity, enhancement tools to being digital emotional infrastructure that provides structured co, presence and mediated companionship during the time of social disruption By studying platform-mediated coping and digital intimacy this research tries to understand how such environments shape contemporary student subjectivities and collective responses to academic pressure.

Keywords: Academic Pressure; COVID-19; Digital Ethnography; Streaming; Online Communities