For my project, I will be researching the question:
What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the discussion of suicide in The Mighty blog posts?
The independent variable of the study is the COVID-19 pandemic. I will be looking at the eras of pre-COVID-19 pandemic, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and post-COVID-19 pandemic. The pre-COVID-19 pandemic era includes the years 2018 and 2019. COVID-19 broke out on December 31, 2019, among humans in Wuhan, China. (Torales et al. 2020). Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic era begins in 2020 and also includes the year 2021. The dependent variable of the study is the discussion of suicide. Specifically, I will assess how the themes within the discussion of suicide posts have changed with the eras of the COVID-19 pandemic. I will be analyzing how people discuss suicidal ideation, how people are impacted by the suicides of others, how people discuss suicide attempts, how people are affected by the discussion of suicide, suicide prevention, and other themes that may appear. To analyze my variables, I will be utilizing a blogging platform called The Mighty. The Mighty is a platform that allows people to share their experiences and connect with others about mental health, chronic illness, rare diseases, disability, and more. The Mighty’s goal is to help people with health challenges and their loved ones better manage their condition. The Mighty has over 3.5 million registered users and is sharing more than 50,000 personal health stories (The Mighty 2023). The Mighty allows users to view stories, posts, and videos, however, in 2018 The Mighty allowed users to view stories, thoughts, and questions. My unit of analysis will consist of stories posted on The Mighty.