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Schizophrenia on Turkish Twitter: an exploratory study investigating misuse, stigmatization and trivialization

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate use and misuse of the word ‘schizophrenia’ and its derivatives to assess the prevalence of stigmatizing and trivializing attitudes and the meanings attributed to the condition on Turkish Twitter.

Methods

Using R programming language, we collected Turkish Twitter posts containing the terms used for schizophrenia in Turkish through Twitter’s Search API over a 47-day period between July and June 2019. After removing retweets, we randomly sampled 3000 tweets and manually categorized them in three dimensions: use type (metaphorical/non-metaphorical), topic and attitude. Qualitative analysis on representative tweets were performed and word frequencies were calculated.

Results

In total 44,266 tweets were collected and after removing retweets, 24,529 tweets were obtained. Overwhelming majority of the tweets (91.7%) used the terms metaphorically and the majority displayed stigmatizing (68.3%) and trivializing (23%) attitudes. Politics was the most common topic (58.2%) followed by everyday/social chatter (28.5%). Only a small number of tweets were part of awareness campaigns (0.2%) or displayed a supportive attitude (0.8%). Terms were often used metaphorically in a stigmatizing manner as personal or political insults, while in everyday/social contexts, they were used in a trivializing manner to label eccentricity, oddness, overthinking and suspiciousness. Popularity and reach metrics show that these tweets were extensively retweeted, liked and reached millions of users.

Conclusion

This is the first study investigating attitudes towards schizophrenia on Turkish Twitter. Significantly higher rates of stigmatizing attitudes demonstrate the urgent need for public health and social awareness campaigns targeting stigma surrounding schizophrenia in Turkey.

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Data availability

Data is available upon request.

Code availability

Available on request

Notes

  1. This attribution seems to be based on a press conference held by Mr. İnce the day after he lost the 2018 presidential election. He referred to the fake news and conspiracy theories on social media about him being kidnapped by the army as ‘fictions spread by a handful of schizophrenics’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Communication, Hacettepe University, Beytepe, Ankara, Turkey

    Umut Yener Kara

  2. Psychiatry Department, Karadeniz Ereğli State Hospital, Eregli, Zonguldak, Turkey

    Başak Şenel Kara

Authors
  1. Umut Yener Kara
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  2. Başak Şenel Kara
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Contributions

UYK: designed the study, conducted data collection, performed manual content analysis, analyzed the data, prepared the figures, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper. BŞK: designed the study, performed manual content analysis, analyzed the data, prepared the figures, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Umut Yener Kara.

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We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

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Kara, U.Y., Şenel Kara, B. Schizophrenia on Turkish Twitter: an exploratory study investigating misuse, stigmatization and trivialization. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 57, 531–539 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-021-02112-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-021-02112-x

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