#MentalHealth For the Culture: Examining Online Manifestations of “Therapy Culture” through Black TikTok Therapists’ Content

Description of Project:

This project studies how Black social media users engage with platformed mental health discourse. Specifically, the project seeks to examine how Black consumers of Black TikTok therapists’ mental health content shape their identities and see their mental well-being in relation to such content. To understand these dynamics, the project will produce and analyze 35 interviews of Black individuals who have consumed ten or more videos from Black TikTok therapists within the past year. The project also seeks to identify the TikTok therapists’ professional motivations for producing mental health content, how they might leverage their “expert” status online, as well as their sense of the continuity between their social media performance and their therapeutic practice offline. To do so, this project will also involve interviews with 10 large “reach” Black TikTok therapists, as well as a discourse analysis of 50 therapeuticTikTok videos.

Description of work that will be assigned to research assistants:

In this project’s early stages, the primary roles of research assistants will be one or several of the following:

a) contribute to the project’s literature review, by collecting, organizing, and summarizing literature

b) create profiles of key TikTok content creators and consumers

c) identify supplementary TikTok mental health content to analyze.

During later stages, research assistants may be asked to:

a) help check the accuracy of transcriptions

b) help code the interview data

c) draft analytic memos of TikTok mental health content.

No previous research experience is expected or required. Before each task, I will specify exactly what I am looking for regarding collecting information on social media content creators, as well as the scope of social media content that I would like to examine. Research assistants can develop their own independent research skills by contributing to the project’s literature review, coding interviews, and analyzing social media content. By participating, students will gain firsthand experience of the initial stages of conducting and analyzing research, which should yield insights that are applicable to multiple academic fields.

Supervising Faculty Member: Professor Al Young

Graduate Student: Elizabeth Harris

Contact information: ekhar@umich.edu

Average hours of work per week: 3-12

Range of credit hours students can earn: 1-4

Number of positions available: 2-3