Influencern och den gordiska knuten : En studie om gestaltningen av psykisk ohälsa i sociala medier

Sammanfattning: This essay examines influencers’ framing of mental illness and how the framing could possibly affect the growing problem of mental illness among Swedish youth. Previous research concerning mental illness among youth, social media and social contagion is presented as a basic understanding of the problem at hand. Approximately 16 000 Instagram posts from Sweden’s most influential Instagram accounts were reviewed for content about mental illness. Posts containing descriptions of mental illness were extracted and analyzed using thematical analysis. The main finding from the thematical analysis was that influencers tended to use The Hero’s Journey dramaturgy in the framing of mental illness. The main conclusion made from the study was that influencer framing of mental health issues, consciously or unconsciously, tended to augment mental illness in a number of ways. The influencers seemed to have developed specializations in different forms of mental illness. The specialized influencer took upon him/herself the role of a mentor to followers experiencing symptoms of the same type of mental illness, leading them on for their own Hero’s Journey. Hence, the mechanisms of The Hero’s Journey were shown to, in themselves, have a tendency to increase the contagious effects of mental illness.