“Sadfishing”: nueva tendencia de espectacularización de la depresión en TikTok, análisis de influencers

Abstract

This article presents the study of three TikTok accounts: @chica.__.triste; @my_blood.0 and @un_alma_rota3, in which a new emerging digital phenomenon called "sadfishing" is evidenced, which refers to the behavior of people who make publications in digital social networks with content that centrally exhibits their emotional problems. The research is approached from the methodology of Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), as a methodology that explores a research corpus of 90 videos, in which it is investigated from the discursive multimodality that addresses verbal aspects (texts, phrases and comments), audiovisual (melodies, effects and filters), and technocultural (hashtags, emojis). Thus, this research reveals that the phenomenon of "sadfishing" -both in the discursive axes of the published videos, as well as in the users' comments- represents a contemporary social and communicational practice marked by young people who show a mental health condition crossed by loneliness, sadness, depression and even suicidal behaviors. Hence, this article represents an important input to reflect on whether this trend that spectacularizes depression may be a contemporary symptom of the use of social networks by young people as windows of expression of their emotions or to increase the number of followers in their profiles. In this way, this research contributes to the understanding of sadfishing and represents an emerging field of knowledge that intersects communication studies, youth studies and mental health studies.