Study On The Influence Of Media’s Communication About Depression On Users’attitudes Towards Depression On Sina Weibo

With the rapid development of the society,the pace of life is significantly accelerated,and common mental disorders such as depression are increasing year by year.However,many people don’t understand the facts about depression,and even stigmatize depression.But in the new media era,media doesn’t play a leading role in guiding the public to understand depression.At the same time,scholars don’t pay much attention on depression.The research focuses on the communication of stigma about depression by traditional media,represented by three famous Chinese media,that is People’s Daily,Beijing News and the Paper.Postings by media on Sina Microblog are analyzed to explore the relationship between factors that lead to stigmatization on depression and public’s stigma of depression.In the end,practical suggestions are provided for media to present depression-related news in an objective way.Based on the concept of stigma,the dissertation uses content analysis to explore the relationship between stigma factors shown in media’s frame,disease attribution,stance on postings of depression and public’s stigma of depression.Findings show that there are factors contributing to public stigma on depression in postings of the People’s Daily,Beijing News and the Paper.Media’s anecdotal framework on postings about depression more easily leads to public stigma on depression and patients than factual framework.Also,compared with social attribution,media’s personal attribution has more easily caused public stigma on depression and patients.Besides,media emphasize more on the situations where patients with depression do harm to the public than those where patients harm themselves,which has increased more risk perception of the public,leading to stigmatization on patients.Finally,the stereotype of depression and patients presented by media has made the public stigmatize depression and patients.