Self-harm and social media: thematic analysis of images posted on three social media sites.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To explore the nature of images tagged as self-harm on popular social media sites and what this might tell us about how these sites are used.

Design

A visual content and thematic analysis of a sample of 602 images captured from Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

Results

Over half the images tagged as self-harm had no explicit representation of self-harm. Where there was explicit representation, self-injury was the most common; none of these portrayed images of graphic or shocking self-injury. None of the images we captured specifically encouraged self-harm or suicide and there was no image that could be construed as sensationalising self-harm.Four themes were found across the images: communicating distress, addiction and recovery, gender and the female body, id

SUBMITTER: Shanahan N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6367987 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature