#MentalHealthDiscourse

Image Source: Wbseries.in, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Studying online discourse around Mental Health on Twitter


This project explores discourse around mental health in digital spaces, specifically Twitter. By analyzing tweets associated with popular mental health hashtags, we try to examine ways in which the narrative around mental health is shaped online in the everyday. It allows to hear perspectives across a range of actors: users of mental health services and those associated with them, advertisers and corporations, political actors, and the general public.

We will be using TAGS, a free twitter archiving Google Sheet template that facilitates automated collection of tweets. Within seconds, and without typing a word of code, we can gather thousands of tweets! Sounds amazing, right?


Overview

This project is divided into a four-part module

Suggested duration for each module : 60-80 minutes

Introduction

This module introduces students to basics of doing research on Twitter.

Gathering Tweets using TAGS

In this module, students work on gathering tweets related to a hashtag of interest

Analysis of Tweets

In the third module, students work on analyzing their tweets using methods of qualitative analysis.

Writing a Report

In the final module, students will work on writing a report based on their analysis.