8 Online support groups

We collected and analyzed 20 messages in online social support groups, similar to a study done by Braithwaite. Our coding was similar, including a breakdown of each message according to six features:

- Information. Passing on any kind of knowledge of advice.
- Tangible assistance. Performing a direct task or offering direct assistance.
- Esteem support. Validating a user’s importance, competence, and rights.
- Network support. Expanding a user’s social network to others who can provide support.
- Emotional support. Expressing sympathy or encouragement.
- Humor. Any intent to amuse.

All but the last feature was also numerically coded in Braithwaite’s study.

We decided to draw messages from a variety of threads, rather than focus all our message analysis on only a handful of threads. Many posts within a given thread tend to carry a similar tone and support type. This effect may happen because the way in which the thread starter worded his post influences subsequent response content. By choosing from separate threads, we may be able to avoid an unnecessarily biased set of results.

Our results largely agreed with Braithwaite’s analysis. We saw more informational, emotional, and esteem support more than any of the other support types. Furthermore, tangible and network support were extremely rare. Unlike in Braithwaite’s results, we had more informational support than any single other support type (in Braithwaite’s data, emotional support appeared the most). Our data also indicates that humor appears in moderate amounts on support groups. It is definitely more common than tangible or network support, but it doesn’t occur nearly as often as information-related or emotion-related support.

Information support might have been so common because of the types of inquiries made by thread starters. Many people knew exactly what type of advice or suggestions they were seeking. This straight-to-the-point kind of post will tend to yield informational responses in order to satisfy the original poster’s request. It should also be noted that most of our messages involved a mental-related issue rather than a physical disability. Braithwaite mentions that those with non-physical disabilities can often do something about their situation, whereas those with physical disabilities cannot. Therefore, mental support messages should be mostly informational, while physical disabilities should generate more emotional support messages. The informational, esteem, and emotional messages we saw were generally intended to assuage any feelings of despair and hopelessness in the subject, which is a primary goal in support forums. Therefore it makes sense that these three types of messages were the most frequent.

Online support group members are generally not within close physical proximity. Thus there is little incentive to provide tangible support, since it would be extremely inconvenient to do so. Network support is also rare because the act of participating in an online support group automatically connects you to the support network of individuals who monitor the group’s activity. Our data only yielded one tangible support example and one network support example, supporting these explanations.

We found online support groups to be responsive to help requests in general. The “bystander effect,” whereby increasing the number of people decrease the likelihood of helping, does not apply in CMC because the medium is asynchronous and connects physically distant users. These two features create the illusion that there isn’t a huge group currently examining a thread without any replies. Thus, diffusion of responsibility is lowered and people feel more inclined to reply.

Walther’s dimensions of attraction online social support can help us explain certain features of our results. Social distance, or the physical distance separating users, helps online support groups by bringing together a larger pool of expertise. Moreover, this expertise can be accessed by anyone at any time, without having to meet in person. This is perhaps the single most valuable asset of online support groups and possibly why our data has so many information support messages. It also explains our lack of tangible support messages – online support groups are utilized precisely because they offer support one cannot get from close proximity. Anonymity allows users to self-disclose potentially embarrassing details without having to worry about what people think of them later on. This may give other users the insight necessary to provide proper esteem and emotional support.

Partner: Sara Jih (Red blog)

Messages:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20