Inspecting Vulnerability to Depression From Social Media Affect

How Framed Messages Influence Depression Assessment Intentions: Interactivity of Social Media as a Moderator

This study examines how the framing and interactivity of messages influence the intentions of individuals to take a depression assessment. An experiment with a 2 (message framing: gain-versus loss-) × 2 (interactivity: low versus high) between-subject design was conducted among 269 Chinese participants (M = 30.70, SD = 7.34). The results showed that those reading loss-framed messages had a higher intention to take a depression assessment compared to those reading gain-framed messages. Secondly, those reading messages delivered with high interactivity had a higher intention to take a depression assessment than those reading messages delivered with low interactivity. Further, the interaction effect of framed messages and their varying degrees of interactivity was found to influence the intentions of individuals to take a depression assessment as well. Specifically, participants who read the loss-framed message reported stronger intention in the high interactivity group. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of loss-framed and gain-framed messages in promoting the intention to take a depression assessment in the low interactivity condition.

The Effect of User Psychology on the Content of Social Media Posts: Originality and Transitions Matter

Multiple studies suggest that frequencies of affective words in social media text are associated with the user's personality and mental health. In this study, we re-examine these associations by looking at the transition patterns of affect. We analyzed the content originality and affect polarity of 4,086 posts from 70 adult Facebook users contributed over 2 months. We studied posting behavior, including silent periods when the user does not post any content. Our results show that more extroverted participants tend to post positive content continuously and that more agreeable participants tend to avoid posting negative content. We also observe that participants with stronger depression symptoms posted more non-original content. We recommend that transitions of affect pattern derived from social media text and content originality should be considered in further studies on mental health, personality, and social media.