Instagram as a Window to Societal Perspective on Mental Health, Gender, and Race: Observational Pilot Study

Utter, Kierstin; Waineo, Eva; Bell, Capricia; Quaal, Harrison; Levine, Diane

doi:10.2196/19171

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Recently, internet-based programs addressing mental illness stigma have been established worldwide owing to their low cost, accessibility, and scalability [12][13][14]. Studies have shown the effectiveness of internet-based stigma reduction programs in the form of social media platforms, digital games, webinars, filmed social contact, and websites [9,[15][16][17][18][19]. Research has also shown that internet-based and face-to-face stigma reduction programs are equally effective [20,21].…”

Section: Internet-based Stigma Reduction Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Internet-Based Storytelling Programs (Amazing Adventure Against Stigma) in Reducing Mental Illness Stigma With Mediation by Interactivity and Stigma Content: Randomized Controlled Trial

Fong¹,

Mak²

2022

J Med Internet Res

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Background Mental illness stigma has been a global concern, owing to its adverse effects on the recovery of people with mental illness, and may delay help-seeking for mental health because of the concern of being stigmatized. With technological advancement, internet-based interventions for the reduction of mental illness stigma have been developed, and these effects have been promising. Objective This study aimed to examine the differential effects of internet-based storytelling programs, which varied in the levels of interactivity and stigma content, in reducing mental illness stigma. Methods Using an experimental design, this study compared the effects of 4 storytelling websites that varied in the levels of interactivity and stigma content. Specifically, the conditions included an interactive website with stigma-related content (combo condition), a noninteractive website with stigma-related content (stigma condition), an interactive website without stigma-related content (interact condition), and a noninteractive website without stigma-related content (control condition). Participants were recruited via mass emails to all students and staff of a public university and via social networking sites. Eligible participants were randomized into the following four conditions: combo (n=67), stigma (n=65), interact (n=64), or control (n=67). The participants of each group viewed the respective web pages at their own pace. Public stigma, microaggression, and social distance were measured on the web before the experiment, after the experiment, and at the 1-week follow-up. Perceived autonomy and immersiveness, as mediators, were assessed after the experiment. Results Both the combo (n=66) and stigma (n=65) conditions were effective in reducing public stigma and microaggression toward people with mental illness after the experiment and at the 1-week follow-up. However, none of the conditions had significant time×condition effects in reducing the social distance from people with mental illness. The interact condition (n=64) significantly reduced public stigma after the experiment (P=.02) but not at the 1-week follow-up (P=.22). The control condition (n=67) did not significantly reduce all outcomes associated with mental illness stigma. Perceived autonomy was found to mediate the effect of public stigma (P=.56), and immersiveness mediated the effect of microaggression (P=.99). Conclusions Internet-based storytelling programs with stigma-related content and interactivity elicited the largest effects in stigma reduction, including reductions in public stigma and microaggression, although only its difference with internet-based storytelling programs with stigma-related content was not statistically significant. In other words, although interactivity could strengthen the stigma reduction effect, stigma-related content was more critical than interactivity in reducing stigma. Future stigma reduction efforts should prioritize the production of effective stigma content on their web pages, followed by considering the value of incorporating interactivity in future internet-based storytelling programs. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05333848; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05333848

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Section: Internet-based Stigma Reduction Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Internet-Based Storytelling Programs (Amazing Adventure Against Stigma) in Reducing Mental Illness Stigma With Mediation by Interactivity and Stigma Content: Randomized Controlled Trial

Fong¹,

Mak²

2022

J Med Internet Res

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“…Mie Birk Jensen & Karen Hvidtfeldt Article: Reconfigurations of illness and masculinity on Instagram Social media has come to play a central part in relation to illness as a source of information, support, community-making, as well as self-expression (e.g., Stage, 2017;Page, 2012). With more than 1 billion users (Statista, 2021), Instagram is one of the most-used social media platforms worldwide and a growing forum for discussing health-related topics (Utter et al, 2020). Women are featured more frequently than men in online communication on illness (e.g., Kim, 2015;Baik et al, 2019), and this seems to apply to Instagram as well (Sendra, 2020;Utter et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With more than 1 billion users (Statista, 2021), Instagram is one of the most-used social media platforms worldwide and a growing forum for discussing health-related topics (Utter et al, 2020). Women are featured more frequently than men in online communication on illness (e.g., Kim, 2015;Baik et al, 2019), and this seems to apply to Instagram as well (Sendra, 2020;Utter et al, 2020). Also, research tends to examine women's use of social media in relation to conditions we often associate with women, e.g., fibromyalgia (Berard & Smith, 2019), breast cancer (Gurrieri, 2019), contested illness (Groenevelt, 2022), or pregnancy sickness (Eagle, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Reconfigurations of illness and masculinity on Instagram

Jensen

Madsen

2023

MedieKultur

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In this paper, we explore how men’s experiences of living with illness are mediatized on Instagram, thus understanding social media platforms as “sociotechnical affordances” that support and modulate how everyday lives are lived (Paasonen, 2018). The article zooms in on four Danish Instagram profiles (with approximately 2,000 followers each) that centre on experiences of living with different diagnoses, including morbus chrohn, hip dysplasia, chronic pain, and mental illness. By applying the concepts “biological entrepreneurship” (Stage, 2017), “bodywork”, and “spornosexuality” (Hakim, 2019), we examine how masculinity becomes reconfigured as a resource, rather than an opposition to health. The content on Instagram emerges as entrepreneurial by extending the body: Situated within the larger framework of the profiles’ content and their place in the platform economy of attention, illness is transformed into a narrative and an affective source, whether on the politics of gender, visibility of illness, monetary gain, or self-help.

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“…A widely used approach to construct the self on SNSs nowadays, is posting selfies, being pictures of oneself, taken by oneself (Qiu et al, 2015). Via such visual self-presentations, clearly visible identity characteristics, as gender and race, become much more prominent than in textual self-presentations (Kapidzic & Herring, 2011Utter et al, 2020). Such identity characteristics guide online self-presentations, resulting in differences in self-presentations among individuals (Kapidzic & Herring, 2011Utter et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Via such visual self-presentations, clearly visible identity characteristics, as gender and race, become much more prominent than in textual self-presentations (Kapidzic & Herring, 2011Utter et al, 2020). Such identity characteristics guide online self-presentations, resulting in differences in self-presentations among individuals (Kapidzic & Herring, 2011Utter et al, 2020). For example, regarding gender, females post more group selfies than males and they tend to replicate feminine ideals as portrayed in mass media in their selfies Sorokowska et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling Social Media Effects

Vaate¹

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The rapid growth in popularity of social media platforms has fueled concerns about the possible negative effects of social media use on young people’s mental health and body image. To unravel social media effects, scholars argued that social media activities should be divided into active and passive social media use. It has been hypothesized that active social media use (i.e., creating content) leads to positive effects on mental health and body image, whereas passive social media (i.e., viewing content) leads to negative effects. In some cases, however, active social media use appeared to also lead to more negative feelings about oneself and one’s life, while passive social media use can lead to more positive feelings about these matters. Hence, the active-passive dichotomy seems a rough division that needs further specification. What types of content do young people post online, and what do they passively consume? And how does that affect their mental health and body image? To advance our knowledge and insights on these matters, the overarching goal of this dissertation was to investigate if, when, and how social media use affects young people’s mental health and body image. In Chapter 2, findings of a systematic literature review indicated that how social media use coincides with mental health and body image largely depends on the content of the self-presentation created or passively consumed. For example, sharing negative life events was generally linked to decreased subjective well-being. In contrast, sharing authentic self-presentations was linked with increased subjective well-being. The second study (Chapter 3) examined how ethno-racial identities may predispose differences in publicly posted selfies. Facial recognition was used to classify the selfie-takers’ ethno-racial identity on over 3000 publicly posted selfies. Findings revealed that individuals varying in ethno-racial identity generally differed in their online self-presentations. For example, Asian and Hispanic selfie-takers posted more of their context and less of themselves than black and white selfie-takers. The third study in this dissertation examined how the prevalence of posting and seeing different photo-types was linked with mental health and body image (Chapter 4). This study included more than 400 adolescents. Findings of this study indicated that, for example, posting more authentic photos of oneself is associated with higher levels of mental health, whereas posting edited photos is associated with more body shame. The last study examined the potential longer-term impact of social media use (Chapter 5). This study included more than 400 Japanese adolescents and more than 500 Dutch adolescents. The adolescents completed three online surveys, with one-month intervals in between. Findings of this study indicated that both a higher frequency of posting and being exposed to authentic photos can induce positive outcomes for mental health and body image, whereas both a higher frequency of posting and being exposed to edited photos of others was found to relate to negative outcomes. Results were, however, different between Dutch and Japanese adolescents. The results of the studies in this dissertation generally conclude that time-based approaches of social media use reflect an oversimplification to interpret the possible effects on mental health and body image. The findings of this dissertation all advocate that there is a need to apply an integrated content-specific and behavior-specific approach. Moreover, social media effects are conditional, meaning that social media effects cannot be attributed to all adolescents and may vary across cultural context. Hence, if and when social media impacts mental health and body image largely depends on how and why they use social media as well as the way they respond to their social media use.

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Instagram as a Window to Societal Perspective on Mental Health, Gender, and Race: Observational Pilot Study

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

The Effects of Internet-Based Storytelling Programs (Amazing Adventure Against Stigma) in Reducing Mental Illness Stigma With Mediation by Interactivity and Stigma Content: Randomized Controlled Trial

The Effects of Internet-Based Storytelling Programs (Amazing Adventure Against Stigma) in Reducing Mental Illness Stigma With Mediation by Interactivity and Stigma Content: Randomized Controlled Trial

Reconfigurations of illness and masculinity on Instagram

Unraveling Social Media Effects

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