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Exploring Online Depression Forums via Text Mining: A Comparison of Reddit and a Curated Online Forum
Moßburger, Luis, Wende, Felix, Brinkmann, Kay and Schmidt, Thomas (2020) Exploring Online Depression Forums via Text Mining: A Comparison of Reddit and a Curated Online Forum. Proceedings of the Fifth Social Media Mining for Health Applications Workshop & Shared Task, pp. 70-81.Date of publication of this fulltext: 04 Oct 2021 09:44
Article
DOI to cite this document: 10.5283/epub.49298
Abstract
We present a study employing various techniques of text mining to explore and compare two different online forums focusing on depression: (1) the subreddit r/depression (over 60 million tokens), a large, open social media platform and (2) Beyond Blue (almost 5 million tokens), a professionally curated and moderated depression forum from Australia. We are interested in how the language and the ...
We present a study employing various techniques of text mining to explore and compare two different online forums focusing on depression: (1) the subreddit r/depression (over 60 million tokens), a large, open social media platform and (2) Beyond Blue (almost 5 million tokens), a professionally curated and moderated depression forum from Australia. We are interested in how the language and the content on these platforms differ from each other. We scrape both forums for a specific period. Next to general methods of computational text analysis, we focus on sentiment analysis, topic modeling and the distribution of word categories to analyze these forums. Our results indicate that Beyond Blue is generally more positive and that the users are more supportive to each other. Topic modeling shows that Beyond Blue's users talk more about adult topics like finance and work while topics shaped by school or college terms are more prevalent on r/depression. Based on our findings we hypothesize that the professional curation and moderation of a depression forum is beneficial for the discussion in it.
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Details
| Item type | Article |
| Journal or Publication Title | Proceedings of the Fifth Social Media Mining for Health Applications Workshop & Shared Task |
| Title of Book: | Proceedings of the Fifth Social Media Mining for Health Applications Workshop & Shared Task |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication: | Barcelona, Spain (Online) |
| Page Range: | pp. 70-81 |
| Date | December 2020 |
| Institutions | Languages and Literatures > Institut für Information und Medien, Sprache und Kultur (I:IMSK) > Lehrstuhl für Medieninformatik (Prof. Dr. Christian Wolff) Informatics and Data Science > Department Human-Centered Computing > Lehrstuhl für Medieninformatik (Prof. Dr. Christian Wolff) |
| Keywords | Health Language Processing, Social Media, Reddit, Topic Modeling, Sentiment Analysis |
| Dewey Decimal Classification | 000 Computer science, information & general works > 004 Computer science 100 Philosophy & psychology > 150 Psychology 400 Language > 400 Language, Linguistics 400 Language > 420 English |
| Status | Published |
| Refereed | Yes, this version has been refereed |
| Created at the University of Regensburg | Yes |
| URN of the UB Regensburg | urn:nbn:de:bvb:355-epub-492984 |
| Item ID | 49298 |
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