Behind the Screen and Behind the Researcher: Reflexivity in Digital Mental Health Inquiry

The purpose of this paper is to reflexively examine how researcher positionality, theoretical commitments, methodological choices, and ethical decision-making shaped the interpretation of a previously conducted qualitative study on digital mental health activism. Drawing on my earlier digital ethnographic study of two South African mental health activists who used social media to disclose their experiences of depression, this paper presents a reflexive qualitative re-examination of the research process. The original study identified three themes: visibility through vulnerability, authenticity as activism, and community, connection, and psychoeducation. Rather than revisiting these as empirical findings, this paper examines how they were co-constructed through researcher experience, cultural assumptions, theoretical interpretation, and ethical reflection. The reflexive analysis presented in this paper demonstrates how internalized cultural narratives about emotional expression, together with dramaturgical and affect theories and ongoing ethical negotiations, influenced knowledge production. By positioning reflexivity as an analytic practice rather than a retrospective acknowledgment of bias, the paper shows how revisiting completed qualitative studies can strengthen methodological rigor, transparency, and ethical sensitivity while generating new methodological insights into researching vulnerability in digital environments.