“Do You Want to Be a Well-Informed Citizen, or Do You Want to Be Sane?” Social Media, Disability, Mental Health, and Political Marginality

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of people with disabilities, a traditionally marginalized group in US politics, with social media platforms during the 2016 presidential election. Using focus groups with participants with a wide range of disabilities, the significance of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook is discussed. Results highlight ambivalent experiences with these platforms, which support some elements of political inclusion (more accessible and more relevant election information) but at the same time also exacerbate aspects of marginality (stress, anxiety, isolation). Four coping strategies devised by participants to address digital stress (self-censorship, unfollowing/unfriending social media contacts, signing off, and taking medication) are illustrated. The relationship between these contrasting findings, social media design and affordances, as well as potential strategies to eliminate an emerging trade-off between discussing politics online and preserving mental health and social connectedness for people with disabilities are discussed.

Shale Gas Development and Community Distress: Evidence from England

“…Specifically, opposition and support of shale gas development was often described as highly stressful [ 24 ]. This is also consistent with some of the protest literature that documents higher levels of stress as a result of engaging in political activism [ 25 , 26 ]. Likewise, previous research on shale gas in the UK suggests that some residents discover that participating in the democratic process is unlikely to change shale gas development in their community, leading them to describe feelings of unwanted distress rather than empowerment [ 7 ].…”

Introduction: Marginality and Social Media

“…Every article in this collection focuses on a population that is significantly under-represented in scholarly research more generally. Populations of study include people of color (Davis, this issue; Smith et al, this issue), refugees (Udwan et al, this issue), LGBTQ + people (Birnholtz et al, this issue), people with disabilities (Trevisan, this issue), indigenous people (Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Richez et al, this issue), and people from the Global South (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue). Although social media have many limitations (centralized corporate control, limited reach to some parts of the world, and financial barriers to entry, to name just a few), the possibility to expand populations of study through techniques like observation, asynchronous participation, and flexible interview scheduling was embraced by most in this collection.…”

“…In this special issue, it is notable that the majority of manuscripts employ qualitative methods, including interviews (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue; Udwan et al, this issue; focus groups [Trevisan, this issue], and discourse analysis [Davis, this issue]). Qualitative methods have long been the dominant method used in the study of marginalized groups (Barron, 1999), partially because of the nature of questions of marginality as well as the possibility of elevating voices of the marginalized.…”

“…Sometimes, researchers themselves are members of the populations they study, putting them at risk of secondary trauma as they collect and analyze data and, possibly, primary trauma when they visit field sites where they too are in harm’s way. Furthermore, research with marginalized populations is often more challenging, with time spent arranging accommodations for participants with, for example, limited communication ability, for example, Trevisan (this issue), unpredictable schedules, for example, Soriano and Cabañes (this issue), or unreliable access to communication technology, for example, Udwan et al (this issue). These forms of labor are infrequently acknowledged and certainly do not typically factor into conversations about academic publishing or research ethics.…”

Making focus groups accessible and inclusive for people with communication disabilities: a research note

“…The section on "Redesigning focus groups" lays out a set of principles that support the inclusion of people with communication disorders in focus group research and identifies critical steps that may lead to marginalization and exclusion, if mishandled. The following section on "Inclusion strategies" discusses a set of solutions adopted in a recent project in which participants with and without communication disorders interacted in focus groups (Trevisan, 2019(Trevisan, , 2020.…”