Perspective - (2023) Volume 10, Issue 2
Received: 02-Feb-2023, Manuscript No. Iphspr-23-13465; Editor assigned: 04-Feb-2023, Pre QC No. Iphspr-23-13465; Reviewed: 18-Feb-2023, QC No. Iphspr-23-13465; Revised: 21-Feb-2023, Manuscript No. Iphspr- 23-13465 (R); Published: 28-Feb-2023, DOI: 10.36648/2254- 9137.23.10.172
The user viewpoints on norms, attitudes, and behaviours surrounding psychedelic substances as they are expressed in a Danish online forum are the topic of this study. In order to take into account the dialectical interaction between individual and shared knowledge regarding the use and meaning of psychedelics, the study combines an interest in online drug research with a focus on discourse analysis. A socio-cognitive approach to the study of discourse was used as inspiration for the theme coding and analysis of 1,865 postings from 154 threads of online conversation. A small number of dominating discourses emerged after all topics were divided into 54 categories and further studied to trace recurrent patterns in the formation of meaning. There were found to be five main the recreational, the therapeutic, the spiritual, and the scientific. and the discussion of performance. When forum users describe, argue, and negotiate their understandings and usage of psychedelics, we contend that these discourses can be regarded as the frameworks that they can draw from and replicate. The significance of taking a nuanced approach to user impressions is illustrated by this study. Future drug policy and practise development should include these distinctions and prepare for wide variance in the purposes and modes of psychedelic use.
Psychedelics; Illicit drugs; Online forum; Discourse analysis; User perspectives
This essay examines user perceptions of psychedelic drugs through content analysis of a well-known Danish online community where psychedelic usage is openly discussed [1]. Informed by a socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis, our goal is to uncover the primary ways that people who take psychedelics communicate about, comprehend, and frame these drugs and to discuss these as "psychedelic discourses" [2]. We also talk about the possible consequences for policy, as well as for persons who use or are thinking about using psychedelics, of the dominating online discourses on these substances [3]. The research is undertaken in the midst of what has been dubbed a recent "psychedelic renaissance" in the medical community as well as among the general population, which includes a proliferation of psychedelics' favourable depictions [4]. The public's interest in psychedelics has recently increased, which has led to the publication of recent clinical studies about their therapeutic benefits [5]. As a result, there has been an increase in mainstream media content about the positive effects of psychedelics, including the Netflix documentary "How to change your mind" and two of the world's most popular podcasts, "The Joe Rogan Experience" and "The Making Sense Podcast [6].
The increasing media attention is expected to affect mainly young people's comprehension and interest in psychedelics like Vannuccin, according to prior study on the effects of media [7]. Today's kids live highly digital lives, and internet platforms, particularly non-governmental websites with user-generated content our research focuses on traditional serotonergic psychedelics, which include LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT. These drugs are classified as agonists of the serotonin 2A receptor [8]. We picked the term "psychedelics" despite the fact that other terms including hallucinogenics, psychotomimetics, mysticomimetics, psychotropics, and entheogenics are also in use because it appears to be the term that is currently accepted in both research and popular culture [9]. Our study focuses on a Danish online community with over 25,000 registered users that is open to everyone and is probably one of the first psychedelic communities that young people in Denmark visit before exploring other parts of the internet [10]. There are instances when online forums and other comparable digital communities are referred to as platforms where the meanings relying on a wide range of conceptual frameworks, such as natural science, indigenous harm reduction, and spirituality, the effects and applications of psychedelics are defined, built, shared, and negotiated [11]. Thus, these groups serve as settings for the creation and transmission of knowledge and attitudes, including perceptions of psychedelics that may pose a threat to the dominant paradigm [12].
Such online social processes of knowledge creation and sensemaking imply, from a poststructuralist standpoint, that discourse, not the subject, develops knowledge and establishes the boundaries of the agency of sense-making [13]. We stress the significance of examining user-contributed forum content as both an expression and reproduction of social cognition while also building on Martin and Stenner's concept of drug discourses in this work [14]. It is therefore crucial to identify any governing discourses, comprehend the constraints and opportunities they make available, and investigate how forum participants operate within them in order to account for the internal workings and external effects of such an online psychedelic forum [15]. Many works on discourses have been linked to a Foucauldian perspective in the field of alcohol and drug research, particularly within the study of drug policy, where experiences, practises, and populations are constructed as "things" in need of regulation. Focusing on "problematization," academics who take a "governmentality" approach highlight discourse's ability to define, characterise, or portray issues that only exist inasmuch as they convey political and cultural ideas. So, according to a Foucauldian perspective, and more particularly, in the study of "problematization," beliefs and behaviours relating to drug use are created through knowledge-making processes that are shaped by the influence of discourse.
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Citation: Heamant Mishra (2023) A Qualitative Study in Danish Online Forum: Psychedelic Discourses. Health Sys Policy Res Vol. 10 No. Issue 2:172
