Överskuldsatthet - En netnografisk studie om överskuldsattas beskrivningar av sitt mående på forumet LånForum

Sammanfattning: There are some people that cannot bear with their own burden of debt. These are over-indebted individuals. Research show that the reasons for over-indebtedness are macroeconomic shocks, personal shocks such as sickness, divorce and unemployment, but also sociological factors that make individuals want to spend more than they should. Additionally, research show that being over-indebted is correlated with various negative health effects, such as: higher risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts, overweight, depression, anxiety and so on. The aim of this study was to contribute to the research field of over-indebtedness as a social problem. Furthermore, the aim was to examine how over-indebted individuals describe their own well-being. These aims were accomplished by analysing what over-indebted individuals wrote regarding their well-being on the Swedish internet forum LånForum, a forum for discussing topics such as loans and credits. In total 330 posts from LånForum were read and a selected 43 analysed using the economy-shame model and Goffmans concept of stigma. Through these theoretical positions the descriptions of the over-indebted persons we concluded that over-indebted individuals describe their mental and physical health, in relation to their over indebtedness, in highly negative terms; describing thoughts of suicide, self hatred, anxiety, overweightness, hearth problems, stomach pains, gastric ulcers and so on. Furthermore, the study showed that over-indebted individuals also describe that they feel ashamed, lonely and not “normal” as an effect of their overindebtedness.