3-4 December 2024, University of Turku, Finland
The digitalisation of mental healthcare is a major transnational trend and emergent business, taking diverse forms from digitised psychotherapies to AI-generated chatbots, and from peer support on social media to organisational data-mining. These themes lie at the core of a symposium on digital mental health, to be held at University of Turku on 3-4 December 2024. The event consists of public keynotes by Professor Adrienne Evans (Coventry University, UK) and Professor Katrin Tiidenberg (Tallinn University, Estonia) and a two-day workshop where participants’ work-in-progress papers will be commented on by the keynote speakers, organizers and fellow participants.
Keynotes:
The keynote lectures are organised at the Aava lecture hall at the University of Turku (Arcanum, Arcanuminkuja 1, 20500 Turku) and can be followed online at this link.
Adrienne Evans: Good vibes, positive mindsets, and intimate therapeutics: Gendering structures of feeling in digital culture
Tuesday December 3rd, 10.15 EET
Abstract:
There is an urgent need to address mental and emotional health, wellbeing, digital culture, and our relationship with technology in the twenty-first century. Capturing the ambiance of our contemporary moment, elements of digital culture are described as having ‘all the feels’, a state and online vernacular to describe feeling emotionally overwhelmed. However, this feeling is also ambivalent, marked by the inseparability of, on the one hand, a sense of hostility and toxicity, and on the other, an imperative to share ‘good vibes’, develop ‘positive mindsets’, and ‘be kind’. Such ambivalence is deeply gendered, where positivity is culturally and historically associated with femininity. Meanwhile, digital platforms have become part of the solution to higher numbers of people reporting emotional distress, redirecting the need for self-help, self-care, therapy, validation, and wellbeing back to the same devices (and, occasionally, the same platforms) that are reportedly causing suffering.
In this talk, I will outline a theoretical framework for making sense of digital positivity cultures, drawing together analysis of positivity where the “positivation of the world allows new forms of violence to emerge” (Han, 2015, p.6), with the cultural condition of permacrisis and its implicit gendered consequences. In the latter, I rely on critical feminist analysis of analogous and interwoven ‘good feelings’ of confidence and body positivity (Orgad & Gill 2022), relatability (Kanai, 2018), the triad of perfect-imperfect-resilience (McRobbie 2020), and happiness (Ahmed 2010). I evidence the usefulness of this way of making sense of positivity by drawing examples from the ‘-nesses’, namely wellness, cuteness, and kindness. In doing so, the talk will make moves towards defining feminist wellness, radical self-care, and critical kindness, as concepts that demonstrate more hopeful futures and practices of care, that could remake an emotional landscape and structure of feeling in ways that are less cruel.
Bio: Adrienne Evans is Professor of Gender and Culture in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures. Her research focuses on accounts of intimacy, and she is interested in creating new ways of thinking about notions of the good life, wellbeing and positivity through digital technology in relation to the vulnerabilities these concepts engender, by seeking to stimulate more inclusive, equitable and feminist-inspired ways of being-in-the-world. She is co-author of Technologies of Sexiness (2014), Postfeminism and Health (2018) and Postfeminism and Body Image (2022), and Digital Feeling (2023). She co-founded the AHRC network Postdigital Intimacies and the Networked Public-Private, and co-editor of the forthcoming collection of the same name.
Katrin Tiidenberg: Authentic suffering, relatable struggle: mental health on and with social media
Wednesday December 4th, 10.15 EET
Abstract:
Mental health discourse is increasingly pervasive on social media. There are content creators who focus entirely on the topic (e.g. stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism), but referring to personal mental health struggles is also common in the content of creators whose focus lies elsewhere (e.g. fitness, study advice, productivity advice, beauty, finance). This serves to destigmatize mental ill health and normalize talking about it. However, research has shown that references to one’s mental health struggles also generate a sense of relatability and authenticity among audiences, thus adding to the trustworthiness of content creators and serving them well within the densely populated attention economy of social media. In response, audiences grow increasingly suspicious of creator’s motivations when sharing mental health information. In this talk I will examine how trust is constructed through social markers of authenticity—such as vulnerability and transparency—and technical-visual cues that support believability. I will introduce a conceptual framework of social media authenticity as a resource and a genre from a forthcoming book, analyze the paradox of prominence (e.g. the tensions between attention and authenticity) in the case of socially mediated mental health discourse, and ask how this discourse shapes and constrains our understanding of mental ill-health and mental well-being.
Bio: Katrin Tiidenberg is Professor of Participatory Culture at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School of Tallinn University, Estonia and the author of multiple books on social media, digital visual cultures and digital research methods, most recently “Tumblr” (2021, co-authored by Natalie Ann Hendry and Crystal Abidin). She is currently lead of an international research project on visual digital trust (TRAVIS) and leading the Participatory Wellbeing Research Group of the recently launched Estonian Centre of Excellence of Wellbeing Sciences (ESTWELL). Her research interests span digital cultures, networked visuality, internet governance and self-care. More info at: https://katrin-tiidenberg.com/
The symposium will be followed by a publication of a special issue on digital mental health, edited by Adrienne Evans, Marjo Kolehmainen and Katrin Tiidenberg (in alphabetical order), in 2025.
Organising committee: Marjo Kolehmainen (University of Turku) (chair), Tuuli Kurki (University of Helsinki), Elina Ikävalko (University of Helsinki), Jarkko Salminen (Tampere University) and Laura Antola (University of Turku).
The workshop is jointly organized by:
Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture (IDA), a research consortium funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Research Council of Finland
Networked Care: Intimate Matters in Online Mental Health Care (NetCare), a research project funded by the Research Council of Finland
Visibilising Counter-Stories of Mental Health (MadEnCounters), a research project funded by the Kone Foundation
Social Science Mental Health Research Network (Yhteiskuntatieteellisen mielenterveystutkimuksen verkosto)