#selfharn on Instagram: Understanding online communities surrounding non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) through conversations and common properties among authors
Standing
Undergraduate
Type of Proposal
Visual Presentation (Poster, Installation, Demonstration)
Faculty
Faculty of Human Kinetics
Faculty Sponsor
Sarah Woodruff
Proposal
Users tagging #selfharn on Instagram are believed to be a part of a secret non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) community. The purpose of this study was to (1) determine the nature of the larger #selfharn conversation on Instagram, (2) analyze common properties of the visual content (i.e., images and videos; n=93) tagged with #selfharn, and (3) discover what kind of environment the authors (n=50) of #selfharn were creating. A multi-method approach was utilized for this study. Netlytic (Grudz, 2016) was used to generate a text and content analysis to examine the authors’ captions and comments (N=8,772) associated with #selfharn (collected over a seven-day period). After removing #selfharn from the dataset, the text analysis revealed that #depression (n=3,081) and #suicide (n=2,270) were the most commonly used terms associated with #selfharn. Overall, 52% (n=4,386) of the popular words/phrases related with #selfharn posts were categorized as ‘bad feelings’. Through manual coding, it was determined that the majority of #selfharn visual content (n=92; 99%) did not generate an advisory warning but did contain a wound (n=70;75%).The #selfharn author analysis determined that most were women (n=18; 36%) with a dark-coloured profile aesthetic (n=37; 74%) determined by an overwhelming amount of gray, black, blue, red, or purple colours. According to the text and content analyses, #selfharn on Instagram may be contributing negatively to an online community of mental health issues.
Grand Challenges
Viable, Healthy and Safe Communities
#selfharn on Instagram: Understanding online communities surrounding non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) through conversations and common properties among authors
Users tagging #selfharn on Instagram are believed to be a part of a secret non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) community. The purpose of this study was to (1) determine the nature of the larger #selfharn conversation on Instagram, (2) analyze common properties of the visual content (i.e., images and videos; n=93) tagged with #selfharn, and (3) discover what kind of environment the authors (n=50) of #selfharn were creating. A multi-method approach was utilized for this study. Netlytic (Grudz, 2016) was used to generate a text and content analysis to examine the authors’ captions and comments (N=8,772) associated with #selfharn (collected over a seven-day period). After removing #selfharn from the dataset, the text analysis revealed that #depression (n=3,081) and #suicide (n=2,270) were the most commonly used terms associated with #selfharn. Overall, 52% (n=4,386) of the popular words/phrases related with #selfharn posts were categorized as ‘bad feelings’. Through manual coding, it was determined that the majority of #selfharn visual content (n=92; 99%) did not generate an advisory warning but did contain a wound (n=70;75%).The #selfharn author analysis determined that most were women (n=18; 36%) with a dark-coloured profile aesthetic (n=37; 74%) determined by an overwhelming amount of gray, black, blue, red, or purple colours. According to the text and content analyses, #selfharn on Instagram may be contributing negatively to an online community of mental health issues.