Mediaeffects in Russian Internet: Case of Depression and Anxiety Discourse

The Western scientific community agrees that the use of social media by people with symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders have a positive impact on their condition. Many psychological studies confirm that the most important factors determining the willingness to seek professional help and treatment is the patient's immersion in the biomedical discourse of depression and the awareness that his condition is a medical diagnosis. Thus, for people experiencing symptoms of depression, online communities act as a safe space to establish social contact, receive the support and validation needed for a successful recovery. The controversial and ambiguous impact of the Internet on the development of anxiety and depression may vary depending on culture and discourse. Thus, despite the results of Western studies confirming that social media have a positive impact on people with depressive and anxiety disorders, it is unknown whether these findings are applicable to the conditions of Russian cultural and social environment. Cross-cultural studies of the Russian and American online communities show that the perception of depression by Russian Internet users is significantly different from the one in Western countries, so the involvement in the discourse of depression in Russian social media may not have a positive effect, or even aggravate the condition. In this paper, we used the methodology of discourse analysis to find out what constitutes a discourse of depressive and anxiety disorders in the Russian-speaking online community and how people with symptoms of these disorders use social online communities. The major method of the study is qualitative frame analysis of posts from Russian and English online communities over the past year.