Expressions of Mental Health Stigma in Chinese Social Media: Implications for Intervention

• In Event: Culture and Mental Health Stigma: Communication as Barrier and Bridge Across Generations

Abstract

A content analysis was conducted to investigate public opinion leaders’ posts on depression in Chinese social media in terms of whether they promoted or reduced stigma associated with this issue through discussion, as well as the difference in their communication depending on their roles of content producer and platform provider. The study revealed that public opinion leaders often play the role of platform provider by retweeting other social media users’ messages on the issue. Even though they sometimes added their own expressions in addition to retweeting, their views on this issue often comply with the messages they retweeted. On the other hand, when functioning as the content producer by posting their original thoughts and experiences, these influential microbloggers tended to be more cautious in voicing out their views towards mental illness. Thus, opinion leaders on social media are likely to share (retweet) both stigmatized and non-stigmatized content, but not as likely to post original content that promotes stigma. These findings imply that providing stigma-opposing messages to opinion leaders or encourage them to generate their original posts on the issue would help reduce stigmatized content across Chinese cyberspace.

Authors

• Yu Liu, Florida International University

• Weirui Wang, Florida International University