Paper Title
DOES OTT SOCIAL VIEWING RELIEVE COVID-19-RELATED DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS? A MODERATED MEDIATION MODEL OF SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS AND SOCIAL NETWORK TYPES

Abstract
Abstract - After the outbreak of COVID-19, people have lacked offline social opportunities and had to focus their energy on online social activities. During the pandemic, the demand for video services (hereafter OTT) has also rapidly increased around the world. OTT social viewing refers to the act of interacting with other users while simultaneously watching content through the social viewing service provided by OTT service providers. Based on the social compensation hypothesis and the social capital theory, we conducted an online survey of people who used Watcha party, a representative OTT social viewing service in South Korea after the pandemic. The findings of this study show that although people were unable to relieve COVID-19-related depressive symptoms directly by using social media, they were able to regain emotional stability after building social connectedness through online social activities. Also, regarding forming social connectedness during OTT social viewing, with whom people interacted played a more important role than how many people they interacted with. Keywords - COVID-19, OTT, Social viewing, Social connectedness, Social network