Is social media helping people talk about mental health?
This week the Guardian published an article #timetotalk: Is social media helping people talk about mental health? to coincide with Time to Talk Day run by the Time to Change campaign. #timetotalk asked us all to spend five minutes talking about mental health so we can break down stigma and increase understanding. Time to Change have really embraced social tools to spread their message, as in this short film promoting #timetotalk I was struck by the question posed by the Guardian, as it gets to the heart of one of the themes I have been considering in my PhD research over the last few years. It also caused me to reflect that back in 2011 when I began my research, I would never have imagined such a headline would make it into the mainstream media. It is a reminder of how embedded online social networking has become in our day-to-day lives (at least for many of us) and evidence of the particular affordances of social media for people talking about difficult issues such as mental health. My online ethnographic research has primarily focused on a now defunct blog and the ecoystem of blogs that surrounded it. It’s another reminder of the fluid and impermanent nature of online social networks. During my fieldwork the conversation moved inexorably from the slower paced and asynchronous world of blogs (or madosphere as some called it at the time) towards the faster paced world of Twitter and real-time chats. What was once a space and set of practices that felt subversive and risky to many of its participants, is now increasingly bubble wrapped in professional...
#crisisteamfail and boundary violation
Recent conversations on Twitter using the hashtag #crisisteamfail drill to the very heart of issues of agency (of individuals) and control (of institutions) which I have been researching on social networking sites over the last few years – the extent to which relationships between people accessing and providing mental health services and the mainstream media are being re-shaped and disrupted online. With one eye on the #crisisteamfail hashtag I also happened to be reading a short article by Michael Slade entitled Breaking down Boundaries* which seemed very pertinent. In the article he considers three different types of relationships formed between nurses and people they support: Detached – led by a nursing agenda with expert knowledge passed from nurse to patient Partnerships – collaboration with a recognition of shared expertise Real – personal relationships in which nurses relate to people accessing their service simply as people and where they (people) are in control of decisions. Whilst Slade argues that neither one type of relationship is better than another, he also acknowledges that real relationships are often cited by people living with mental health difficulties as very important. He suggests that real relationships can be a challenge to the mental health system because they disrupt ‘traditional ideas about professional behaviour, and the kinds of boundaries that lie between nurses and clients’. Slade goes on to argue that: ‘it should be accepted that behaviours that have traditionally been regarded as boundary violations may become acceptable’ and he cites examples of nurses sharing personal information about themselves or giving tokens as ways in which real relationships are nurtured. I’m quite taken with this...
Three salutary reflections on the #SamaritansRadar app
On the 29 October The Samaritans launched a new Twitter app called Samaritans Radar. A search on their promotional hashtag #SamaritansRadar reveals extensive conversation, much of which expresses disquiet from people with mental health difficulties, about the surveillance function of this app. A plethora of blog posts have offered varied perspectives and insights into concerns related to the app. Firstly @MarkOneinFour summarises the key issues being discussed on the PsychCentral blog and @bainesy1969 raises serious concerns over data privacy which issues he argues are being breached by the app. @BipolarBlogger raises ethical issues from a personal perspective in her post Mr Sam and his magical radar booth and @dr_know shares her thoughts as a mental health researcher on her blog. From a more technical perspective @akrasodomski questions whether algorithms can realistically turn tweets in to meaningful data about suicidal ideas and @adrianshort considers ethical issues related to data analysis. These are just a few of many blog posts and tweets that reflect expert opinion and debate on the topic. An underpinning theme is one endemic to social networking sites – context collapse an idea coined by Danah Boyd (2014) – imagined and actual audiences as well as contexts collide where meaning and intentions can be easily misunderstood. The potential for well-meaning followers to take action or say the wrong thing on the basis of a tweet found through an algorithm is significant. The potential for non-well-meaning followers to add to people’s distress has also been highlighted. I’d like to contribute to the conversation by sharing three simple reflections from a user-centred design point of view – something we are thinking about a lot...
#JoyCott and the four affordances of networked publics
For some of us, the Asda #MentalPatient incident is etched on our memories as a Twitterstorm which took an issue from relative obscurity, to mainstream media notoriety in the space of an evening. Today a serendipitous scroll through Twitter led me to happen upon another corporate blunder – an indication of how much further we have to go in reducing stigmatising attitudes towards mental distress. Put simply, the @joythestore responded in a misjudged manner to a legitimate question from an individual on Twitter about a card they were stocking in their store. A couple of tweets later and @joythestore had unwittingly provided perfect content for another online protest. Rather than discuss the specifics of the offensive tweets, I will consider how the technical affordances of Twitter and the social practices of individuals combine to enable a viral protest. In order to do this, I draw on four affordances of ‘networked publics’ which, according to Boyd, are notably different in character from physical public spaces in the following ways: Persistence: the durability of online expressions and content Visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness Spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared Searchability: the ability to find content (Boyd, 2014, p.11). I use these four themes as a basis to examine how a mixture of technical affordances and deliberate social practices by people on Twitter, have turned the #JoyCott episode into a viral phenomenon. Persistence – the persistence of content on social media enables asynchronous conversations to take place without temporal limitations. Persistence also means that content can be hard to remove. Practices on social networking sites such...
Curating mental health content online – what do you think?
Last night I took part in a conversation with @markoneinfour @psycle_doc @MHnurselecturer and @PsychorBust about curating mental health content online. You can find a storify of our conversation here. It came about as a result of Mark posting a blog about the demise of One in Four magazine with reflections on what had worked and what hadn’t. You can read his post here. My PhD research has primarily focused on the now sadly departed The World of Mentalists (TWOM) blog which curated blogs and tweets from around the madosphere on a weekly basis – the nearest thing I’ve found to regular curation of personal/unofficial conversations about mental health. TWOM ran its course and is testament to the ephemeral nature of content online – things come and go, work for a while, and then no longer work. What I loved about TWOM was the fact that it was curated in a highly participatory way (guest curators each week), with many different perspectives, and shared fascinating blogs that I probably wouldn’t have come across any other way. It was also outside the boundaries or official or institutional conversations. There are all sorts of different types of mental health content online, from blogs through to historical websites through to Wikipedia pages and Twitter chats. And no doubt lots more. Is it desirable to find a way of curating this content and, if so, what would be the best way of doing it? Lots of questions to which I don’t have the answers but I’d be very interested in extending the conversation further and knowing what other people...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
