An empirical content analysis of posts made to the r/depression subreddit

Abstract

Online fora are one of the oldest spaces for internet communication. These fora provide internet users the opportunity to connect with others of similar interests and experiences. Online mental health communities are fora for individuals that wish to connect with others based on a shared mental health experience. These digital ecosystems offer an avenue for seeking advice or validation, as well as for freely sharing experiences with similar others within a culture of reduced stigma and social support. 

Reddit is a popular and readily accessible platform that hosts moderated communities known as subreddits, which include communities for mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, trauma and eating disorders. This study is an analysis of data collected by way of the Reddit application programming interface (API) from the r/depression subreddit. A conceptual framework was developed for preparing and evaluating the data by way of an empirical content analysis. The content analysis was conducted on 11975 posts made by 9593 unique user accounts over a 56-day period. 

The analysis of user behaviour in this subreddit relates to general engagement, the temporal attributes of the dataset, and the demographic and geographic attributes of the users. This investigation provides insights into the words most frequently used in posts made to this subreddit, the time of day and day of the week that most individuals posted to the forum, the age and locational distribution of r/depression subreddit users accounted for in the dataset and how these insights relate to the global prevalence of depression.