“Am I really cursed?” self-disclosure in a spiritual Facebook group
“Am I really cursed?” self-disclosure in a spiritual Facebook group

conceptualizing networked therapeutic culture

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates the therapeutic culture in social media and looks at a Facebook group for spiritually inclined people who seek solutions and remedies to their daily worries and troubles. This study is based on discourse analysis of 498 posts, combined with ethno- graphic observation and interviews. To understand how the therapeutic culture is shaped in social media, I analyse the motives and experiences of people who self-disclose in the group, the discursive framing of problems by both help-seekers and advice-givers, and the progress of self-disclosure. I propose the term networked therapeutic culture to describe the dialogic and interactive therapeutic culture that has emerged on social media and can be characterised by, first, the more accessible platform for speaking out, second, its shaping of the therapeutic discourses and third, how it affords accumulating self-disclosure in return for help.

• Details
• Contents