Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores the boundary between clinical mental health expertise and lay influence on digital platforms within the expansion of therapeutic culture beyond clinical settings accelerated and reshaped by platform affordances and focuses on Turkish Instagram and X as an underexamined case.

Paper long abstract

The proliferation of digital platforms, characterized by a distinctive media infrastructure centering around participation, has transformed the practices of knowledge production in many areas that were once relying heavily on professional authority. Health, as being one of the areas of professionalized knowledge, has undergone similar transformations in the ways we know, experience, and share experiences about it in the era of platformization. Addressing the increasingly blurring line between professional authority and lay expertise in platformized health communication, this paper explores the boundary between clinical mental health expertise and lay influence on digital platforms within the expansion of therapeutic culture beyond clinical settings accelerated and reshaped by platform affordances. It investigates how digital platforms with their specific platform affordances reconfigure the production of psychological knowledge between professionals (psychologists and psychiatrists) and lay actors (patient-influencers and uncredentialed mental health coaches), drawing on platform walkthroughs on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) as two contrasting digital platforms and qualitative thematic analysis of Turkish mental health accounts on these platforms. Examining the Turkish context as an underexamined case with its specific dynamics around mental health stigma, professional authority, and platform adoption, this paper argues that platform affordances on Instagram and X produce distinct yet converging forms of expertise by dissolving the professional/lay distinction not necessarily through democratization but more often through algorithmic decisions that favor visibility, commercialization, and user engagement over formal expertise, situating lay expertise-driven digital health activism in a contested area.

Keywords: Platformization, mental health communication, professional authority, lay expertise, platform affordances