@article{0e22bcbc404d4e87ac08d3601d2c655e,
title = "Exchanging Social Support Online: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis of Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients{\textquoteright} Interactions on a Health Forum",
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{\textquoteright}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.",
keywords = "health care, IBS, sentiment analysis, social network analysis, social support",
author = "Fan Yang and Bu Zhong and Akhil Kumar and Chow, {Sy Miin} and Ann Ouyang",
note = "Funding Information: Akhil Kumar, PhD (University of California, Berkeley, 1988), is a professor of information systems at the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University. He is an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems. He is also on the editorial board of Information and Technology Management Journal. He has been a principal investigator for National Science Foundation and also received support from IBM, Sun Microsystems, and other organizations for his work. His current research interests are in health IT, health care forums, business process management (BPM) and workflow systems, service composition, process mining, and business analytics. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 AEJMC.",
year = "2018",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1177/1077699017729815",
language = "English",
volume = "95",
pages = "1033--1057",
journal = "Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly",
issn = "1077-6990",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Inc.",
number = "4",
}