#selfharn on Instagram: understanding online communities surrounding non-suicidal self-injury through conversations and common properties among authors

OBJECTIVES: #selfharm has been blocked by Instagram, but manoeuvring hashtags (e.g. #selfharn) are beginning to appear in order for secret non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) communities to communicate. The purpose of this study was to (a) determine the nature of the #selfharn conversation on Instagram, (b) analyze common properties of the visual content (i.e. images and videos; n = 93) tagged with #selfharn, and (c) discover what kind of environment the authors (n = 50) of #selfharn were creating. METHODS: A multi-method approach was utilized for this study. Netlytic was used to generate a text and content analysis to examine the authors’ captions and comments (n = 8772) associated with #selfharn (collected over a seven-day period). RESULTS: After removing #selfharn from the dataset, the text analysis revealed that #depression (n = 3081) and #suicide (n = 2270) were the most commonly used terms associated with #selfharn. Overall, 52% (n = 4386) of the popular words/phrases related with #selfharn posts were categorized as ‘bad feelings’. Through manual coding, it was determined that the majority of #selfharn visual content (n = 92; 99%) did not generate an advisory warning but did contain a wound (n = 70; 75%). The #selfharn author analysis suggests that most were women (n = 18; 36%) with a dark-coloured profile aesthetic (n = 37; 74%) determined by an overwhelming amount of grey, black, blue, red, or purple colours. CONCLUSION: According to the text and content analyses, #selfharn on Instagram may be contributing negatively to an online community of mental-health issues. More resources should be provided by Instagram to those who are involved in the NSSI Instagram community.