Leaving home to attend University constitutes a transition that is often characterized by an increased risk of loneliness, a psychological state that predicts poor mental health outcomes. Informed by a comprehensive conceptual framework of coping with stress, this study sought to examine the coping strategies young adults deploy to manage experiences of loneliness whilst studying at University. A qualitative, cross-sectional study was designed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 University students who had moved away from home to study, and who self-identified experiencing loneliness. We used directed qualitative content analysis to analyse the data both between and within participants. The results demonstrate that participants used a variety of coping strategies to manage the distressing experience of loneliness. Accommodation, mainly in the form of distraction, support-seeking, social isolation, self-reliance, and problem-solving behaviours were the most prevalent coping strategies mentioned. Coping reflecting helplessness, escape, submission, and more rarely, opposition, were also found, albeit less often. Students showed evidence of a wide-ranging coping repertoire, with the deployment of specific coping strategies presenting as highly selective and contextual. Strategies for coping with loneliness take into account constraints and opportunities in the environment, the availability and appropriateness of social resources, as well as individual resources and needs.
Increasing numbers of individuals describe themselves as feeling lonely, regardless of age, gender or geographic location. This article investigates how social media users self-disclose feelings of loneliness, and how they seek and provide support to each other. Motivated by related studies in this area, a dataset of 22,477 Twitter posts sent over a one-week period was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a thematic analysis, we demonstrate that self-disclosure of perceived loneliness takes a variety of forms, from simple statements of "I'm lonely", through to detailed self-reflections of the underlying causes of loneliness. The analysis also reveals forms of online support provided to those who are feeling lonely. Further, we conducted a quantitative linguistic content analysis of the dataset which revealed patterns in the data, including that 'lonely' tweets were significantly more negative than those in a control sample, with levels of negativity fluctuating throughout the week and posts sent at night being more negative than those sent in the daytime.
Increasingly, social media platforms are understood by researchers to be valuable sites of politically-relevant discussions. However, analyses of social media data are typically undertaken by focusing on 'snapshots' of issues using query-keyword search strategies. This paper develops an alternative, less issue-based, mode of analysing Twitter data. It provides a framework for working qualitatively with longitudinally-oriented Twitter data (user-timelines), and uses an empirical case to consider the value and the challenges of doing so. Exploring how Twitter users place ''everyday'' talk around the sociopolitical issue of UK welfare provision, we draw on digital ethnography and narrative analysis techniques to analyse 25 user-timelines and identify three distinctions in users' practices: users' engagements with welfare as TV entertainment or as a socio-political concern; the degree of sustained engagement with said issues, and; the degree to which users' tweeting practices around welfare were congruent with or in contrast to their other tweets. With this analytic orientation, we demonstrate how a longitudinal analysis of user-timelines provides rich resources that facilitate a more nuanced understanding of user engagement in everyday socio-political discussions online.
Weight stigma results from the mediatisation of 'obesity'; conceptually, a medicalised problem resulting from personal bodily irresponsibility. We undertake a frame analysis of 1452 comments on a thematically-related online news article published via The Guardian, about the status of 'obesity' as a disability in EU employment law. We identify three themes: weight as a lifestyle choice or disability; weight as an irresponsible choice, and weight as a simple or complex issue. We contend that the design of the commenting platform prevents counter-narratives from challenging the dominant ('obesity') framing for three reasons: content is driven by comments appearing earlier in the corpus; the commenting system primarily supports argument between polarised rhetorical positions, and the platform design discourages users from developing alternative terminologies for producing counter-narratives. In this way, we explore how weight stigma is propagated through online media, and how users' comments intersect with the affordances of the platform itself.
Care provision in many nations increasingly relies on the work of informal, or non-professional, carers. Often these carers experience substantial disruptions and reductions to their own sociality, weakened social support networks and, ultimately, a heightened risk of social isolation. We describe a qualitative study, comprised of interviews, design workshops and probes, that investigated the social and community support practices of carers. Our findings highlight issues related to becoming and recognising being a carer, and feelings of being ignored by, and isolated from, others. We also note the benefits that sharing between carers can bring, and routes to coping and relaxing from the burdens of care. We conclude with design considerations for facilitating new forms of digitally mediated support that connect those that care, emphasising design qualities related to transitioning, talking, belonging and escaping.
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