Médias à fonction thérapeutique à l’ère numérique : étude qualitative du rôle des contenus sensoriels dans les pratiques de bien-être socio-numérique, à travers le cas de l’ASMR roleplay

Abstract

This article examines how sensory content distributed through digital platforms is perceived by audiences as a resource for relaxation, emotional reassurance, and everyday self-regulation. Focusing on ASMR roleplay, the study explores how non-medical audiovisual content based on whispering, slow gestures, personalized attention, and relational staging can acquire a perceived therapeutic function within socio-digital wellness niches. The central research question is how ASMR roleplay reshapes the relationship between media, body, and affect by producing a symbolic experience of care situated between entertainment, relaxation, and sensory mediation. The objective is to analyze the uses, meanings, and reception patterns of these videos among viewers who incorporate them into routines of sleep, rest, concentration, or emotional relief. The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive methodology based on semi-structured interviews with regular ASMR roleplay viewers, complemented by a netnographic observation of comments posted under French- and English-language videos. The findings reveal four main dimensions: the construction of a reassuring media space, the emergence of mediated sensory intimacy, the integration of ASMR into everyday micro-rituals of digital wellness, and the ambiguities of informal therapeutic framing in platform-based content. The article argues that ASMR roleplay should be understood as a socio-affective mediation of subjective support, without being confused with clinical therapy.