Faculty of Communication, Hacettepe University, Beytepe, Ankara, Turkey.
Psychiatry Department, Karadeniz Ereğli State Hospital, Eregli, Zonguldak, Turkey.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2022 Mar;57(3):531-539. doi: 10.1007/s00127-021-02112-x. Epub 2021 Jun 5.
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.
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.
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.
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.
本研究旨在调查“精神分裂症”一词及其派生词的使用和误用情况，以评估土耳其 Twitter 上对该病症的污名化和轻视态度的流行程度，以及归因于该病症的含义。
使用 R 编程语言，我们通过 Twitter 的搜索 API 收集了 2019 年 7 月至 6 月期间 47 天内包含土耳其语中用于精神分裂症的术语的土耳其 Twitter 帖子。在删除转发后，我们随机抽取了 3000 条推文，并将其手动分为三个维度：使用类型（隐喻/非隐喻）、主题和态度。对具有代表性的推文进行了定性分析，并计算了单词频率。
共收集了 44266 条推文，删除转发后，共获得 24529 条推文。绝大多数推文（91.7%）以隐喻的方式使用这些术语，大多数推文表现出污名化（68.3%）和轻视（23%）的态度。政治是最常见的话题（58.2%），其次是日常/社交闲聊（28.5%）。只有少数推文是意识宣传活动的一部分（0.2%）或显示出支持态度（0.8%）。这些术语经常被以隐喻的方式以污名化的方式使用，作为个人或政治侮辱，而在日常/社交语境中，它们被以轻视的方式用来标记古怪、奇怪、过度思考和多疑。流行度和覆盖范围指标表明，这些推文被广泛转发、点赞并覆盖了数百万用户。
这是第一项调查土耳其 Twitter 上对精神分裂症态度的研究。显著更高的污名化态度率表明，土耳其急需开展针对精神分裂症周围污名的公共卫生和社会意识宣传活动。
