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Start Date

25-6-2022 12:00 AM

End Date

25-6-2022 12:00 AM

Abstract

Reinventing mental health discourses through feminist methods of care

Panel rationale

Facebook admitted that Instagram may be harmful for young women’s mental health. This effects-driven news coverage contributes to moral panics around social media and mental health in which resisting platforms’ dominance rests solely on the individual. However, mental health and social media use is less technologically determinist, and our panel asserts reasons why social media research must allow for the multiple ways in which individuals use these tools. We urge for methods, similar to Radway’s (1984) insights into romance readers, that go beyond a surface-level analysis of content to encourage multimodal approaches that reveal the nuances of social media’s role in our health and wellbeing.

This panel asks how a feminist methodological approach can be used to center the voices of those who suffer with care. A feminist study of mental health and social media generates tensions that demand attention from scholars not only towards content but also towards the agency and affective attachments of users. Feminist methods add depth to the conversation regarding the usefulness of these platforms for those seeking help. Each of our panelists explores how feminist-infused methods may provide a crucial intervention that shapes our findings. A study of closed Facebook groups explores ethical tensions faced by participatory researchers; a study of the discourses of self-care reveals that a look only at algorithmic sources presents neoliberal story that obscures crucial forms of care; and a feminist approach to Instagram shows how it can inform public health decisions by shedding light on the experiences of those who turn to social media when the system fails.

Individual paper abstracts

Using Feminist Methods to Navigate the Ethics of Closed Social Media Spaces

Fredrika Thelandersson

Private Facebook groups have become important sites of knowledge production and support around mental health. Yet, these spaces remain understudied, partly because they present an ethically complicated site for the researcher. This paper explores how feminist methodological approaches may help in studying such sensitive sites. As part of a future post doc research project on mental illness Facebook groups in Sweden, the paper discusses the methodological dilemmas that arise while refusing to be deterred by them.

Adopting a feminist methodology means acknowledging the power imbalance between the researcher and the researched that aims to overcome this inequality through critical and self-reflexive approaches (Harding and Norberg, 2005). The reason for studying these Facebook groups is to understand the lived experience of those living with mental illness and gain insight into how to help. The Swedish mental health care system, like many of its counterparts around the world, is financially strained and often difficult to navigate. A Facebook group, on the other hand, is only a click away. The knowledge produced and the social dynamics of these spaces become important nodes for those who suffer.

I propose in-depth, semi-structured, interviews informed by feminist standpoint theory, with active group members to gain a comprehensive view of members’ experiences and motivations (Wigginton and Lafrance, 2019). These may be combined with surveys via online forms and media go-alongs, so as to enable varying degrees of engagement and anonymity for participants without disrupting existing group dynamics. This paper explores the tensions of this research site with the hope of generating interesting discussions about the limits and possibilities of feminist social media methods.

Feminist Methods towards an Ethic of Self Care through Social Media

Katie McCollough

In response to the upheaval of daily life accompanying COVID-19, self care appears as a popular area of mental health talk on social media. A focus on self care points to critical tensions within feminist scholarship as well as the tensions feminist scholars have noted within a postfeminist landscape. On one hand, critical scholars reveal how a focus on self care foregrounds individual, often commodified, solutions to bigger social problems (such as a lack of mental health resources). On the other hand, as black feminists continue to assert, self care may also function as a radical practice of “love-politics”. Furthermore, particularly for those tasked with caregiving or for communities in which social resources to mental health are lacking or missing, the practice of self care still provides the care needed to move forward. As the Combahee River Collective (1983) asserts, their politics “evolve[s] from a healthy love for ourselves…which allows us to continue our struggle and work.”

Within the panel focused on feminist methods, this paper traces the ways that our understanding of self care may shift in the methods we use to trace the practice on social media. A study of content only found via a keyword search filtered by platform algorithms (Instagram and TikTok), reveals commodified neoliberal notions of care tied to products (bath, candles, nails). A shift to more feminist-oriented methods including snowball sampling and interviews that foreground the experiences of those participating in these sites, reveal a much more resistant ethic of self-care including visible LGBTGQ+ self-love, journaling and meditations that take time to self-define as well as to pause and to breathe within the rapid pace of late-capitalism’s drive for constant productivity.

Using Feminist Social Media Research Methods to Inform Public Health Decisions: A Study of Mental Health Conversations on Instagram

Fanny Gravel-Patry

The number of Instagram pages dedicated to mental health has grown considerably over the past years. What many have termed ‘Instagram therapy’ is particularly popular amongst women, an indicator of the emotional distress that characterizes contemporary womanhood and the failures of neoliberal institutions (Gill and Scharff 2013). These practices provide crucial knowledge about women’s mental health needs and lived experiences, yet policy makers are still overlooking how they could inform public health decisions in favor of quantitative methods.

In the context of this panel, this paper explores how using feminist social media research methods could benefit public health by prioritizing the voices and wellbeing of the studied population rather than the size of the data set (Luka and Millette 2018). This paper traces the particular tensions that emerge when people have health-related conversations in a space where they are also subject to surveillance and data mining. Social media provides new tools for public health agencies to learn about health concerns and topics that are usually absent from their conventional surveys, yet this also means an endless pool of data from which to extract material.

Feminist methods such as in-depth interviews, media walk-throughs, and focus groups, on the other hand, allow researchers to focus on details that might otherwise get lost in larger scale data sets for example women’s experience of mental health services. In a context where medical institutions continue to disregard women’s knowledge of their bodies and minds, feminist social media research methods help foreground their voices and hold policy makers accountable for institutional failures.

Bio

Bios

Fredrika Thelandersson (she/her) is a lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Her research is broadly situated in the fields of Media, Culture, Gender, and Affect studies, with particular focus on sad affects in popular culture and on social media. Fredrika received her PhD in Media Studies from Rutgers University in October 2020 and her dissertation examined discourses around mental illness in women’s magazines, celebrity culture and on social media platforms. She is currently involved in a range of research projects about media and mental health.

Kathleen (Katie) McCollough (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Communication and Media Studies department at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. Her research critically examines participatory media across converging media forms within a promotional culture. Her dissertation focused on the highly feminized texts and practices of scrapbooks as a lens into issues of feminized labor and selfhood within neoliberal contexts.

Fanny Gravel-Patry (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in communication studies at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. She studies mental illness, media practices of care, and digital visual culture. Fanny's dissertation looks at the Instagram practices of women living with mental illness and their use of the app as a tool for care. Her work was recently published in The Conversation and Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Her doctoral research is supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) and Concordia University.

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Jun 25th, 12:00 AM Jun 25th, 12:00 AM

Reinventing mental health discourses through feminist methods of care

Reinventing mental health discourses through feminist methods of care

Panel rationale

Facebook admitted that Instagram may be harmful for young women’s mental health. This effects-driven news coverage contributes to moral panics around social media and mental health in which resisting platforms’ dominance rests solely on the individual. However, mental health and social media use is less technologically determinist, and our panel asserts reasons why social media research must allow for the multiple ways in which individuals use these tools. We urge for methods, similar to Radway’s (1984) insights into romance readers, that go beyond a surface-level analysis of content to encourage multimodal approaches that reveal the nuances of social media’s role in our health and wellbeing.

This panel asks how a feminist methodological approach can be used to center the voices of those who suffer with care. A feminist study of mental health and social media generates tensions that demand attention from scholars not only towards content but also towards the agency and affective attachments of users. Feminist methods add depth to the conversation regarding the usefulness of these platforms for those seeking help. Each of our panelists explores how feminist-infused methods may provide a crucial intervention that shapes our findings. A study of closed Facebook groups explores ethical tensions faced by participatory researchers; a study of the discourses of self-care reveals that a look only at algorithmic sources presents neoliberal story that obscures crucial forms of care; and a feminist approach to Instagram shows how it can inform public health decisions by shedding light on the experiences of those who turn to social media when the system fails.

Individual paper abstracts

Using Feminist Methods to Navigate the Ethics of Closed Social Media Spaces

Fredrika Thelandersson

Private Facebook groups have become important sites of knowledge production and support around mental health. Yet, these spaces remain understudied, partly because they present an ethically complicated site for the researcher. This paper explores how feminist methodological approaches may help in studying such sensitive sites. As part of a future post doc research project on mental illness Facebook groups in Sweden, the paper discusses the methodological dilemmas that arise while refusing to be deterred by them.

Adopting a feminist methodology means acknowledging the power imbalance between the researcher and the researched that aims to overcome this inequality through critical and self-reflexive approaches (Harding and Norberg, 2005). The reason for studying these Facebook groups is to understand the lived experience of those living with mental illness and gain insight into how to help. The Swedish mental health care system, like many of its counterparts around the world, is financially strained and often difficult to navigate. A Facebook group, on the other hand, is only a click away. The knowledge produced and the social dynamics of these spaces become important nodes for those who suffer.

I propose in-depth, semi-structured, interviews informed by feminist standpoint theory, with active group members to gain a comprehensive view of members’ experiences and motivations (Wigginton and Lafrance, 2019). These may be combined with surveys via online forms and media go-alongs, so as to enable varying degrees of engagement and anonymity for participants without disrupting existing group dynamics. This paper explores the tensions of this research site with the hope of generating interesting discussions about the limits and possibilities of feminist social media methods.

Feminist Methods towards an Ethic of Self Care through Social Media

Katie McCollough

In response to the upheaval of daily life accompanying COVID-19, self care appears as a popular area of mental health talk on social media. A focus on self care points to critical tensions within feminist scholarship as well as the tensions feminist scholars have noted within a postfeminist landscape. On one hand, critical scholars reveal how a focus on self care foregrounds individual, often commodified, solutions to bigger social problems (such as a lack of mental health resources). On the other hand, as black feminists continue to assert, self care may also function as a radical practice of “love-politics”. Furthermore, particularly for those tasked with caregiving or for communities in which social resources to mental health are lacking or missing, the practice of self care still provides the care needed to move forward. As the Combahee River Collective (1983) asserts, their politics “evolve[s] from a healthy love for ourselves…which allows us to continue our struggle and work.”

Within the panel focused on feminist methods, this paper traces the ways that our understanding of self care may shift in the methods we use to trace the practice on social media. A study of content only found via a keyword search filtered by platform algorithms (Instagram and TikTok), reveals commodified neoliberal notions of care tied to products (bath, candles, nails). A shift to more feminist-oriented methods including snowball sampling and interviews that foreground the experiences of those participating in these sites, reveal a much more resistant ethic of self-care including visible LGBTGQ+ self-love, journaling and meditations that take time to self-define as well as to pause and to breathe within the rapid pace of late-capitalism’s drive for constant productivity.

Using Feminist Social Media Research Methods to Inform Public Health Decisions: A Study of Mental Health Conversations on Instagram

Fanny Gravel-Patry

The number of Instagram pages dedicated to mental health has grown considerably over the past years. What many have termed ‘Instagram therapy’ is particularly popular amongst women, an indicator of the emotional distress that characterizes contemporary womanhood and the failures of neoliberal institutions (Gill and Scharff 2013). These practices provide crucial knowledge about women’s mental health needs and lived experiences, yet policy makers are still overlooking how they could inform public health decisions in favor of quantitative methods.

In the context of this panel, this paper explores how using feminist social media research methods could benefit public health by prioritizing the voices and wellbeing of the studied population rather than the size of the data set (Luka and Millette 2018). This paper traces the particular tensions that emerge when people have health-related conversations in a space where they are also subject to surveillance and data mining. Social media provides new tools for public health agencies to learn about health concerns and topics that are usually absent from their conventional surveys, yet this also means an endless pool of data from which to extract material.

Feminist methods such as in-depth interviews, media walk-throughs, and focus groups, on the other hand, allow researchers to focus on details that might otherwise get lost in larger scale data sets for example women’s experience of mental health services. In a context where medical institutions continue to disregard women’s knowledge of their bodies and minds, feminist social media research methods help foreground their voices and hold policy makers accountable for institutional failures.