Affective incapacity of the depressed self: Evidence from a narrative study of an online depression community on Weibo

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence of depression worldwide, there is a noticeable number of online depression communities (ODCs) flourishing in cyberspace. This phenomenon offers a discursive platform for observing and discerning people’s mental and affective struggles. Under the overarching framework of narrative analysis, we coded the most salient emotions expressed in 2000 pieces of comments by the top 20 core participants of ‘Zoufan’, an ODC space on China Weibo. We analyze how the members construct their emotive struggles and depressed self in self-talk (disengagement) and interactions (engagement) via linguistic deixis. Based on this communication mapping, this study offers a new notion of affective incapacity as an epistemological insight into depressive emotions. The observed phenomena of both inward-centered (self-talk) emotions and outward-centered (dialogue) emotions point to members’ reduced capacity to affect and to be affected, to intervene and to be intervened. This research is expected to educate both the public and social professionals in recognizing more nuanced emotional deliberation of self-reported depression and take early measures if need be.