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

Background: Gender and race are known to impact attitudes toward mental health topics and help-seeking behavior. Men and minorities are more likely to cite stigma as a reason for not seeking help for mental health concerns, which is of particular relevance given the high rate of suicide in men and c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:JMIR mental health 2020-10, Vol.7 (10), p.e19171-e19171
Main Authors: Utter, Kierstin, Waineo, Eva, Bell, Capricia M, Quaal, Harrison L, Levine, Diane L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Anxiety
Attitudes
Chi-square test
COVID-19
Data collection
Females
Gender
Hispanic Americans
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Mental health
Mental health care
Original Paper
Popularity
Race
Social networks
Social research
Stigma
Suicides & suicide attempts
Tagging
Women
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background: Gender and race are known to impact attitudes toward mental health topics and help-seeking behavior. Men and minorities are more likely to cite stigma as a reason for not seeking help for mental health concerns, which is of particular relevance given the high rate of suicide in men and challenges of historic proportion currently facing minority communities. Instagram provides a platform to discuss mental health, though a lack of male and minority representation may further alienate these populations. Objective: We aimed to investigate whether men and nonwhite individuals are underrepresented in Instagram photos tagged with #mentalhealth (compared to photos tagged with #health) to better understand how gender and race-based representations are manifested on this popular social media platform and discuss the implications. Methods: Three investigators of different genders and racial backgrounds met on nine different days via teleconference to analyze a total of 215 publicly available Instagram photos tagged with #mentalhealth and 215 with #health. These photos were generated using Instagram’s search function, and search results were sorted by most recently published at the time of data collection. For each photo, the three investigators recorded their observations about the gender (male versus female) and race (white versus nonwhite versus racially unclassifiable) of subjects featured in the photo, which they did not discuss with other investigators. Chi-squared analysis was performed on each investigator’s data set to compare the frequency of male versus female and white versus nonwhite subjects identified in each hashtag category. Kappa interrater agreement was calculated for each investigator pair, category (gender or race), and hashtag. Results: All three investigators observed significantly more female as compared to male subjects in photos tagged with #mentalhealth (X2=14.4, P
ISSN:2368-7959
2368-7959
DOI:10.2196/19171