Project:
Potrayal of Mental Health Issue in the Media
Role:
Researcher
Type:
Academic Research
Background
This project was originally created as my final thesis for my masters study back in 2020. The topic that highlight mental health in Indonesian’ began to came up from my concern that related to behaviour of people in Indonesia that seems very avoidance when it comes to mental health issue. I found it really concerning as the way mental health perceived influence both survivor and caretakers behaviour toward necessary help treatment. The behaviour itself seems to dominate people with older generation. which this assumed to be highly related with their media consumption. so that was the first thing came to mind. What kind of content that those people consume?
Research Question
Main Question
Subquestions
Does mainstream online news in Indonesia associate mental health conditions with negative behaviour?
-
How does online news in Indonesia portray mental health issues?
-
What are the dominant themes used to be associated with online news that covers mental health issues in Indonesia?
-
How does online news in Indonesia associate unlawful behaviour with mental health conditions?
How do I answer it?
Method
Quantitative content analysis through framing analysis approach
Sample
Online articles from kompas.com
Published between January 1st 2019 - January 31st 2020
contained mental health issue
Data Analysis Process
By creating coding sheet in Excel which then analyzed by developing pivot tables to illustrate words' category based on Depth of discussion (D.O.D) and theme in each article.
Classification on Depth of Discussion
Classification of theme
Result
Highest D.O.D pattern in online news
article that associates mental health issues with positive keywords tends to discuss the mental health issue extensively as part of its content. In contrast, an article that associates mental health issues with negative words tends only to mention the keywords without any further explanation.
What words are commonly appear?
Generally, most of the keywords found in the article revolve around descriptive, informative and solution-related words. most of the negatively toned words relatively revolve in the related area of criminality and unlawful action.
In what rubrics mental health words appear?
Results shows that Health, Lifestyle, Megapolitan, and Regional rubrics are where mental health keywords found. However, each rubrics dominated with different theme. Positive words found in Health and Lifestyle where Megapolitan and Regional contained with negative words
Connecting the dots
The study shows mainstream online news in Indonesia still associating mental health with criminal issue and violence behaviour. Mainstream media in Indonesia tend to mention mental health words in crime-themed news headlines. Secondly, mainstream online news in Indonesia tends to only briefly mention mental health keyword in the body of articles that associate with crime themes. These two ways of representation might have created misleading perception towards people with a mental health condition as both are not including more explanation about the mental health issue. Association in headline links highly to a wrong first impression of related mental health issue. Besides that, even though most others are not mentioning the mental health keywords in the headline, the numerous exposure of these association might also influence readers' perception. Moreover, coverages that associate mental health issue with negative themed are mostly published under the rubrics that are highly related to hard news content. Thus, this might have driven even more negative stigmatisation along with the credibility of the hard news story.
Even though news coverages that associate criminality and mental health issues dominate the finding, those that cover awareness are still present. These articles tend to publish under health and lifestyle rubrics, and with extensive discussion on mental health keywords. Aside from the less representation of positive coverage of mental health issue, the rubrics allocation might have also been the reason why people in Indonesia are still not aware of related mental health issue. By not putting it under the primary rubric, it makes the articles seem to be less important. Besides that, less coverage on good association also might be caused by journalist limitation of knowledge.
Limitations
1 / Limited keywords
The duration of the study was limited to maximum 3 months. within that time it forces researcher to limit the search keyword to mental health, mental illness, bipolar depression which might not represent the entire dictionary of mental health
2 / Limited Data
The limits on the duration of the study also reduce the scope of the sample timeline to collect realistically collect a one-month worth of data. The collected data may neither represent a holistic perspective on the portrayal of mental health issues of the entire year of 2020 nor do to be representative of the state of media in Indonesia in general
3 / Limited Media
The study acknowledges that different digital media platforms/websites might portray mental health conditions differ from one another. Comparisons between different platforms may provide a more comprehensive result to understand better a complete framing of mainstream online news in Indonesia
Future Research
The study can be used, however, as a reference to extend the study more comprehensively, as this study can only provide a modest examination and simplistic results. Details on more representation of data and more complex associations, such as the role of people with mental health conditions to the media portrayal, cannot be justified in the study. Further study may consider undergoing a more-in-depth analysis on various articles introduction. A more extensive study would deliver more tangible outcomes that are useful to support organisations and government offices in Indonesia to improve awareness and the way mental health is covered and discussed. By doing so, it is hopeful that more research on this topic may lead to the incline of more-informed citizens, a decline of stigmatisation as well as unfair and improper treatment to the people with mental health conditions.