Lost in a sea of highlight reels: The use of social media and mental health metaphors in online health blogs

This article explores the metaphorical conceptualisation of social media and its relationship with mental health and well-being in a specialised corpus of online health blogs, with the aim of discovering how people communicate their experience of social media use, and whether it has a positive or negative influence in their lives. For this purpose, a 20,000-word corpus of blog posts from online health communities, charities and personal blogs were collected and analysed. The main research questions are: a) How is social media conceptualised? b) Are metaphors used to conceptualise social media evaluative? c) How are mental health and well-being conceptualised? d) How are metaphors used to discuss the benefits and challenges of social media use for individuals who suffer from illness? Results show that the DRUGS, PLACE, PATH and FOOD source domains are used to conceptualise social media, and that metaphor is used to highlight both the positive impact of social media in providing social support and its negative impact on symptoms when used excessively.