Finding help in social media. A text mining approach to learn coping strategies in Reddit
Method Stream: Text Mining
ECs: Only 14 EC (standard, no new/own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
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 be also helpful in offering individuals worldwide a supportive community and offering information related to coping strategies.
The available research regarding positive outcomes of large social media, for example, Reddit, is still underexplored. In concrete, this study is aimed at understanding what are the coping strategies shared by others on social media. To explore extensive information such as posts on Reddit, tools like Text Mining are a promising option.
In this study, we will search in communities in r/Anxiety, r/Depression, and r/PTSD. (Park, et al., 2018) among others, to explore coping strategies provided by users to help people worldwide. This study can help to identify what are the most common coping strategies shared by others and how many of the users found such coping strategies useful, among others.
Reference:
Park, A., Conway, M., & Chen, A. T. (2018). Examining Thematic Similarity, Difference, and Membership in Three Online Mental Health Communities from Reddit: A Text Mining and Visualization Approach. Computers in human behavior, 78, 98–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.001