Mediaeffects in Russian Internet: Case of Depression and Anxiety Discourse

Offline, there is a widespread skepticism among Russians about depression and psychiatric medical institutions. In the context of stigmatization of depression and the crisis of the psychiatric system in Russia, online communities are the only available safe public space for people who suffer from depression. Online platforms are becoming a medium in which the biomedical discourse of depression begins to spread among Russian people, and mutual validation mechanisms (which, according to numerous studies, are one of the most important factors for successful treatment of the disease) are functioning within communities dedicated to depression. In this research, we have used a discourse analysis methodology to explore the discourse of depressive and anxiety disorders in the Russian-speaking online communities and how people with symptoms of these disorders use online communities. The main research method used was a comparative qualitative frame analysis of messages in Russian and English-speaking online communities. During the analysis we have made an open encoding of frames, which were then combined into categories - characteristics of the discourse. In the empirical part of this research we have: - identified frames-markers of biomedical discourse, as well as alternative discourses, in the messages of community participants - discovered mechanisms of mutual validation within communities - described the confines in which Russian social reality resists the spreading of biomedical depression discourse. As a result of this research, we see that social and political factors (in particular, the stigma of mental illness, distrust to psychiatric institutions in Russia, political restrictions and censorship) do not allow the biomedical discourse of depression, which is dominating in the English-speaking media, to completely conquer Russian online sphere.