The Language of LGBTQ+ Minority Stress Experiences on Social Media

Overview

Journal Proc ACM Hum Comput Interact

Date 2020 Sep 16

PMID 32935081

Citations 18

Authors

Koustuv Saha

Sang Chan Kim

Manikanta D Reddy

Albert J Carter

Eva Sharma

Oliver L Haimson

Munmun De Choudhury

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) individuals are at significantly higher risk for mental health challenges than the general population. Social media and online communities provide avenues for LGBTQ+ individuals to have safe, candid, semi-anonymous discussions about their struggles and experiences. We study through the language of disclosures and self-experiences on the r/lgbt Reddit community. Drawing on Meyer's minority stress theory, and adopting a combined qualitative and computational approach, we make three primary contributions, 1) a theoretically grounded to identify minority stressors across three types of minority stress-, and , 2) a to scalably identify social media posts describing minority stress experiences, that achieves an AUC of 0.80, and 3) a of linguistic markers, along with their contextualization in the minority stress theory. Our results bear implications to influence public health policy and contribute to improving knowledge relating to the mental health disparities of LGBTQ+ populations. We also discuss the potential of our approach to enable designing online tools sensitive to the needs of LGBTQ+ individuals.

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