Coping Strategies and Mental Health Impact of Climate Change. A Text Mining Approach implemented on Reddit.
Method Stream: Text Mining
ECs: Only 14 EC (standard, no or limited own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
Climate change has become a dominant topic over the last few years and is recognized as one of the 21st century's most significant global threats. Furthermore, a range of emotional responses linked explicitly to climate change, such as helplessness and shame, has been identified as preventing some from taking protective actions (Mkono & Hughes, 2020; Salomon et al., 2017), along with anxiety, grief, and guilt (Ágoston et al., 2022).
Furthermore, Social media is part of everyday life and a resource that usually receives negative attention due to the overall consequences of its overuse. However, social media can also be beneficial in providing individuals worldwide with a supportive community and a platform where people can share their concerns.
The available research regarding concerns, mental health issues, coping strategies, and support shared by users on large social platforms, such as Reddit, regarding climate change is still underexplored. This study aims to explore this affectation and the coping strategies shared in subreddits such as r/ClimateChange, r/ClimateOffensive, and r/Environment, among others. Tools like text mining are a promising option for exploring extensive information, such as posts on Reddit, and have been used in previous studies, including Park et al. (2018).
In this study, several research questions can be answered, such as:
· What mental health effects caused by climate change are most frequently discussed on Reddit and what patterns emerge from them?
· What coping strategies are shared by users on Reddit to cope with mental health affectations caused by climate change?
· What language patterns emerge in different subreddits related to climate change?
Among others. For this project, we will need to work with 3 students that will complement each other's work.