Self-Other Disclosures of Concealable Stigmatized Identities on TikTok: Implications for Interdependent Privacy

People increasingly share personal aspects about themselves and others on social media, including disclosures of concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs). Despite the commonality of such disclosures, little is known about the nature of online content or feedback received when people reveal their own versus other people's CSIs, including those associated with varying levels of stigma. We analyzed 2,042 TikTok videos with 111,705 comments systematically scraped from the hashtags #clinicaldepression, #depression, and #schizophrenia. We hand-coded videos and comments for disclosure types, examined video comment feedback using natural language processing, and investigated key relationships via mixed-effects regression models. The findings indicate that social media users posting videos associated with a comparatively less stigmatized mental health hashtag were more likely to disclose a CSI than those posting videos under a more stigmatized hashtag. Social media users were more likely to disclose other people's CSIs in reference to the more stigmatized, as opposed to a less stigmatized diagnosis. In addition, users commenting on posts were more likely to disclose another person's CSI if the initial post included such a disclosure. In general, all categories of video posts received positive feedback. However, videos that included a disclosure received comparatively more positive feedback than videos without a disclosure. Videos that disclosed someone else's CSI information received less positive feedback than videos where the author disclosed their own CSI. Implications for CSI disclosure and interdependent privacy in social media are discussed.