My final research question was, What is the effect of gender norms on public discussion of mental health in elite athlete’s posts on twitter and the posts’ top comments, from 2010-Present Day? In my study, the independent variable was gender norms, the dependent variable was public discussions of mental health of elite athletes and my units of observation were their twitter posts and their reactive comments. Throughout my research, I had expected to find that male athletes receive less support when coming out about issues of mental health on Twitter than compared to females due to their expected gender norms.
With my study completed, I was able to figure out the answer to my research question. As mentioned in my “Results and Discussion” section, I was able to find three themes from my analysis: Bodily Discourse, The Individual vs. The Community, and Struggles, Stress, and Suicide. Through the basic and interpretive analysis of 15 female athletes on twitter, their tweets about their issues of mental health, as well as those tweets top comments, and the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 15 male athletes on twitter, their tweets about their issues of mental health, as well as those tweets top comments, it is evident that the athletes demonstrate gender normative behavior as well as some unexpected behavior. The themes The Individual vs. The Community, and Struggles, Stress, and Suicide, look at how the tweets are shared and commented on and how it reinforces the expression of gender normative behaviors.
With bodily discourses, of the 15 male athletes that were analyzed on twitter, 73.3% of them had a profile picture that depicted masculinity such as sweat, blood and muscles, and 60% of female athletes’ profile pictures depict characteristics of femininity. This includes long hair, make up, well-dressed, etc. For The Individual vs. the Community, 86.6% of the 15 male athletes are pictured alone. They are not with family, friends or teammates and in contrast, 33.3% of the female athletes’ tweets were retweeted over a thousand times. This was a lot more than male athletes’ posts, showing their sense of community and support system. Lastly with Struggles, Stress, and Suicide, 100% of female athletes discussed depression, anxiety, and their struggles with it in their tweets. Meaning, every single female athlete demonstrated this trait and in contrast, 50% of male athletes have discussed about their issues with suicide or self-harm. This was one of the most surprising statistics for me due to the expected gender male norm of toughness.
Andreas et al 2020 reinforces my findings that male athletes deal with a lot of issues that deal with mental health and when they are talked about, they are met with backlash or are ignored in general. It has been found that male athletes deal with more issues of mental toughness, lack self-compassion, and deal with more disorders. And in the case of my own study, deal with more serious disorders such as suicide.
It is my hope that my research is able to be analyzed and used in further studies of gender norms and how they affect athletes and their mental health. I plan to do further research on student athletes at Gettysburg College on how the mental health of student athletes can be affected by expected gender norms on and off the field.