Investigação psicológica online: explorando as potencialidades e desafios do uso do WebScraping e análise de conteúdo gerado pelo usuário para a detectar sintomas de depressão no Instagram

Abstract

This work constitutes a monograph entitled Online Psychological Research: Exploring the Potentials and Challenges of Using Web Scraping and User-Generated Content Analysis to Detect Symptoms of Depression on Instagram and aims to analyze the potential and challenges of using web scraping and UGC analysis on social media platforms like Instagram to diagnose psychological conditions such as depression. Through these techniques, data from public Instagram profiles were collected to assess the feasibility of psychological diagnosis based on these platforms. The methodology adopted was mixed, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. With a sample of 64 users and sampling by acecibility, the results indicate that Instagram provides a rich source of data for identifying emotional trends related to mental health. However, challenges, especially regarding user privacy, data validity, and ethical considerations, remain significant. This study contributes to the understanding of social media use in psychological research and offers practical recommendations for researchers and mental health professionals