Motives and Practices of Counterurbanization in User Publications on the Online Platform YouTube

This research aims to identify the motives and practices of counter-urbanization based on user publications on the online platform YouTube. Recent global crises — such as the COVID-19 pandemic and military conflicts — have made deurbanization a relevant survival strategy: urban space is increasingly perceived as vulnerable due to risks like epidemics and violence. In conditions where urban environments are seen as unsafe, yet digital technologies allow people to live outside cities while maintaining urban connections. Online platforms—particularly YouTube—have become important arenas for constructing discourses about life beyond the city. The theoretical framework of the research draws on K. Mitchell’s concept of counterurbanization, the anti-essentialist approach of K. Halfacree and J. Murdoch, H. White’s network theory, and J. Urry’s theory of mobility. This allowed us to consider counterurbanization as a multimodal and dynamic phenomenon shaped by the interaction of structural, cultural, material, and agential factors. To build the dataset, two corpora were used — Russian- and English-language — formed through API requests to YouTube with key phrases related to rural living and moving from the city. The total volume of collected content included 9,860 relevant videos, over 786,000 comments, and approximately 450,000 images. The methodology included parsing video content, images, subtitles, and comments via the YouTube API; data labeling and filtering using the BERT model; semantic network analysis, stochastic block modeling, sentiment analysis, and multimodal topic modeling of texts and images using multilevel network analysis. The results show that the discourse of counterurbanization revolves around value-laden binary oppositions: «city vs countryside», «individual vs community», and «market vs family». During crisis periods, relocation to rural areas is perceived as therapeutic mobility aimed at increasing personal safety. A key role in this process is played by the concept of «extensive self» — the individual’s desire to find stability by building multiple relationships with people, material objects, and nature. Adaptation to rural life occurs through shared family practices such as house construction, household management, and the development of local infrastructure. The concept of «house-home» illustrates the dual nature of adapting to rural space — from purely material arrangements to the formation of a symbolic center of family and personal life. Shared practices (e.g., gardening, home repairs, cooking) contribute to the formation of collective identity and the strengthening of social ties. The analysis also revealed differences between Russian- and English-language discourses. In the Russian context, the dominant narrative is pragmatic — focused on creating comfortable living conditions for all family members. In contrast, the English-language discourse tends toward an idealized image of «rural idyll». However, there is a noticeable trend towards the transition from romanticization to practical implementation. This is evident in the growing interest in «off-grid living» and the transformation of the «Cottagecore» aesthetic into material practice, emphasizing energy independence and food autonomy. Thus, counterurbanization does not simply oppose urbanization but emerges as an independent sociocultural process shaped and transformed by crises and technological developments. The findings can be applied in future studies of migration processes, digital culture, and regional development strategies.