Quantifying and Understanding Cross-Cultural Differences in Mental Health Expression via Social Media

Topic: Big Data
Type: Journal Article
Author: Munmun De Choudhury, Sanket Sharma, Tomaz Logar, Wouter Eekhout, RenĀ“e Nielsen Date: August 2016

In recent years, social media data has been used as a way to understand mental health challenges in people.

However, expressions of mental health challenges can differ greatly across genders and cultures. Yet the majority of mental health data is aggregated, meaning gender and cultural differences are often overlooked.

This journal article presents a gender based and cross-cultural quantitative examination of mental health content shared on social media, specifically on Twitter.

It shows that several social and psychological characteristics are unique to women, and that there is a need to investigate the reasons for that more deeply. Identifying gender based and cross-cultural context is critical in the use of big data for making sense of mental health and well-being. 

Read the journal article here.

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