Through the Lens of our Screens: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representations of Bipolar Disorder in Women on TikTok

Bipolar disorder is a mental illness prevalent within society and is one that still holds room for further research, specifically in how it is represented on social media. The disorder is one that has presented women as hysteric or mad throughout history, creating self- and public stigma in association with the disorder. This qualitative thesis hence attempted to answer the question: “How does the content of short-form TikTok videos represent bipolar disorder in women?”. The research used a qualitative critical discourse analysis approach, which included the collection of 134 short- form TikTok videos collected over a two-month period. The videos were analyzed and coded using a coding frame of open, axial, and selective coding. These coding processes involved a coding frame of different word categories related to forms of representation, that being derogatory terms, violent terms, clinical/psychological terms, educational terms, and negative connotations/emotional state terms. It also involved the critical discourse analysis tools of overlexicalization, word connotations, lexical choices, suppression, and structural oppositions. Through the implementation of these categories and tools, five main discourses of representation were found within the dataset: raising awareness and countering media representation, the lens of self-deprecation and feeling like a burden, the “crazy” stereotype, bipolar disorder as a personality trait, and the “bipolar” label and its controversies. Through the analysis of these five discourses, it became evident that many of these representations attempted to counter previous stigmatized and stereotypical representations of bipolar disorder in the media by implementing new and more well-informed depictions of bipolar disorder. Therefore, bipolar disorder was represented through an educational lens, however, was in many cases still rooted in self-stigma, highlighted through self-deprecating humor used by female content creators. The research also found that content creators attempted to deconstruct these stigmas and stereotypes through the use of short form content videos on TikTok, again by increasing educational awareness of the disorder in an online environment.