Exploring Media Portrayals of People with Mental Disorders using NLP

Swapna Gottipati, Mark Chong, Andrew Lim Wei Kiat, Benny Haryanto Kawidiredjo

2021

Abstract

Media plays an important role in creating an impact in society. Several studies show that news media and entertainment channels, at times may create overwhelming images of the mental illness that emphasize criminality and dangerousness. The consequences of such negative impact may impact the audience with stigma and on the other hand, they impair the self-esteem and help-seeking behavior of the people with mental disorders. This is the first study to examine the Singapore media’s portrayal of persons with mental disorders (MDs) using text analytics and natural language processing. To date, most studies on media portrayal of people with MDs have been conducted in developed Western countries. This study found that media articles on MDs in Singapore were largely negative in sentiment; even quotes from experts contain aspects of stigma. In addition, crime-related articles on MDs accounted for a significant portion of the corpus. Our model is also extended to detect positive health articles that discuss recovery and motivation. We further developed a stigma classifier based on the machine learning algorithms and text mining techniques. The classifier based on the XGBoosts performed best with an F1-score around 76%.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Gottipati S., Chong M., Kiat A. and Kawidiredjo B. (2021). Exploring Media Portrayals of People with Mental Disorders using NLP. In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF; ISBN 978-989-758-490-9, SciTePress, pages 708-715. DOI: 10.5220/0010380007080715

in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf21,
author={Swapna Gottipati and Mark Chong and Andrew Lim Wei Kiat and Benny Haryanto Kawidiredjo},
title={Exploring Media Portrayals of People with Mental Disorders using NLP},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF},
year={2021},
pages={708-715},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010380007080715},
isbn={978-989-758-490-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF
TI - Exploring Media Portrayals of People with Mental Disorders using NLP
SN - 978-989-758-490-9
AU - Gottipati S.
AU - Chong M.
AU - Kiat A.
AU - Kawidiredjo B.
PY - 2021
SP - 708
EP - 715
DO - 10.5220/0010380007080715
PB - SciTePress