Abstract

From a sample of over three million tweets from universities in the US, we described the characteristics of universities' communication about mental health on Twitter, including common keywords, bigrams, linked resources, and hashtags, as well as the frequency of dialogic communication and mental health tweets over time, especially in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study uses data mining to collect tweets from official university Twitter accounts and selected accounts of university wellness and counseling programs. Relevant tweets were collected from a large sample using keywords and bigrams relevant to mental health from the Twitter accounts of IACS accredited counseling centers. Universities have a unique opportunity to leverage communication through social media to benefit the mental health of their student body. Many users on social media discuss mental health and seek mental health information using the platforms. Findings from the literature on college student's health information seeking on social media are mixed; while a few university social media campaigns at various institutions have been examined, little is known about how universities use social media generally to communicate about mental health over social media.

Degree

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Instructional Psychology and Technology

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/