Exchanging Social Support Online: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis of Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients’ Interactions on a Health Forum

Fan Yang*, Bu Zhong, Akhil Kumar, Sy Miin Chow, Ann Ouyang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Longitudinal social network analyses were conducted to examine social support exchange among patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) on an online health forum. The analyses of 90,965 messages posted by 9,369 patients from 2008 to 2012 suggest that both receiving and offering support significantly encourage continuous social support exchange. Patients, however, were less likely to offer further social support when they kept reciprocating support only with certain individuals on the forum. Sentiment analysis indicates that self-disclosing one’s emotions during support seeking serves as a significant predictor for the amount of social support the support-seeker could obtain. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1033-1057
Number of pages25
JournalJournalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
Volume95
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2018

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Communication

User-Defined Keywords

  • health care
  • IBS
  • sentiment analysis
  • social network analysis
  • social support

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