Identity Management and Mental Health Discourse in Social Media

TLDR

Social media is increasingly being adopted in health discourse. The study examines how identity, particularly throwaway accounts on Reddit, influences discourse about socially stigmatized mental health conditions, using affective, cognitive, social, and linguistic style measures. The authors analyze Reddit mental health communities, examining throwaway accounts as anonymity proxies, and apply affective, cognitive, social, and linguistic style metrics from psychology. Throwaway accounts in Reddit mental health communities are six times more common than in other subreddits, produce more disinhibited, negative, cognitively biased, self‑attentive, and low‑self‑esteem discourse, and the study suggests implications for mental‑health interventions and community design.

Abstract

Social media is increasingly being adopted in health discourse. We examine the role played by identity in supporting discourse on socially stigmatized conditions. Specifically, we focus on mental health communities on reddit. We investigate the characteristics of mental health discourse manifested through reddit's characteristic 'throwaway' accounts, which are used as proxies of anonymity. For the purpose, we propose affective, cognitive, social, and linguistic style measures, drawing from literature in psychology. We observe that mental health discourse from throwaways is considerably disinhibiting and exhibits increased negativity, cognitive bias and self-attentional focus, and lowered self-esteem. Throwaways also seem to be six times more prevalent as an identity choice on mental health forums, compared to other reddit communities. We discuss the implications of our work in guiding mental health interventions, and in the design of online communities that can better cater to the needs of vulnerable populations. We conclude with thoughts on the role of identity manifestation on social media in behavioral therapy.