Peer support of fathers on reddit : quantifying the stressors, behaviors, and drivers
- Authors: Teague, Samantha , Shatte, Adrian
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Psychology of Men and Masculinity Vol. 22, no. 4 (2021), p. 757-766
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- Description: This article aimed to delineate the behavioral patterns of fathers in seeking and providing peer support on the popular social media site Reddit using a sample of 2,393 users. First, fathers’ support-seeking posts were characterized, finding that fathers self-disclosed a range of individual, familial, and societal stressors, including topics sensitive to traditional male gender roles. Second, peers’ comments were differentiated by support type, with differences observed in the behaviors, emotions, and language that peers use when providing advice, confirmation, and encouragement. Third, the relationship between types of fatherhood stressors and their associated peer comments was mapped. While fathers seeking support for individual stressors received fewer comments, the support provided utilized more actionoriented language. Finally, a statistical model was developed to examine the factors that drive peer support on the fatherhood forums, which are observed to influence the quality of peers’ comments and peers’ commenting behaviors. Combined, the findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the peer support environment for fathers on social media like Reddit, strengthening the research literature that is limited to qualitative evidence to date. The results have important implications for formal support services targeting fathers, both online and offline © 2021 American Psychological Association
Social media markers to identify fathers at risk of postpartum depression : a machine learning approach
- Authors: Shatte, Adrian , Hutchinson, Delyse , Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Matthew , Teague, Samantha
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Vol. 23, no. 9 (2020), p. 611-618
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- Description: Postpartum depression (PPD) is a significant mental health issue in mothers and fathers alike; yet at-risk fathers often come to the attention of health care professionals late due to low awareness of symptoms and reluctance to seek help. This study aimed to examine whether passive social media markers are effective for identifying fathers at risk of PPD. We collected 67,796 Reddit posts from 365 fathers, spanning a 6-month period around the birth of their child. A list of "at-risk"words was developed in collaboration with a perinatal mental health expert. PPD was assessed by evaluating the change in fathers' use of words indicating depressive symptomatology after childbirth. Predictive models were developed as a series of support vector machine classifiers using behavior, emotion, linguistic style, and discussion topics as features. The performance of these classifiers indicates that fathers at risk of PPD can be predicted from their prepartum data alone. Overall, the best performing model used discussion topic features only with a recall score of 0.82. These findings could assist in the development of support and intervention tools for fathers during the prepartum period, with specific applicability to personalized and preventative support tools for at-risk fathers. © Copyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2020.