Año 4, No. 1. Enero-Junio (2022)

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered significant trans-formations in the processes of production, exchange and consumption of media content, driven by the desire of contemporary networked society to communicate, in-form and entertain in the midst of a turbulent health and humanitarian moment. In this scenario, YouTube has become the preferred vehicle for video dissemina-tion and consumption. Among the aesthetics available on this platform, this exploratory study focuses its reflec-tions on pandemic productions that relied on 360-de-gree technology, an emerging image modality. Guided by a methodological path formed by a bibliographic review and netnography, the research covered a survey of 400 spherical videos, which were analysed through cartographic, technical and thematic particularities. For this purpose, expressions in Portuguese and Spanish re-lated to 360-degree videos and COVID-19 were entered into the YouTube search system. The results provided an overview of how the pandemic phenomenon influenced the creative sector of 360-degree narratives, highlight-ing, for example, Brazil as the country with the highest number of published works, the virtual tour as the most explored format and the prominence of companies and professionals specialised in content creation, while press vehicles appeared timidly