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Abstract

Popular and professional psychology merge to produce novel forms on TikTok—a platform on which therapeutic content grew enormously during the pandemic, rendering it a productive site to examine mediated mental health subjectivities, including ways people come to understand themselves in terms of mental health pathologies. Examining the dynamic interplay of capacities and constraints of therapeutic and algorithmic frameworks reveals ways in which therapeutic roles and rituals are re-negotiated in this space. Therapists utilize memetic tropes of the platform to position themselves within its affective flows, while leveraging beliefs about the algorithm to connect with users. The affective engagement of users’ works to curate a stream of content against which mental health and therapeutic frameworks are evaluated, ultimately designating a diagnostic gaze to a charismatic algorithm—a potentially emergent social media case of automated forms becoming paradigmatic in the ways we conceive of mental health and therapy.

Keywords

ADHD affect charismatic algorithms influencers mental health mood therapy TikTok

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“TikTok ≠ therapy”: Mediating mental health and algorithmic mood disorders

Abstract

Keywords

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