‘Keep strong, remember everything you have learnt’: Constructing support and solidarity through online interaction within a UK cancer support group

Abstract

This article analyses the linguistic and multimodal interactions of a group of seven cancer patients and two carers, who had previously met on a residential course and subsequently set up an online support group. I explore how this group of participants constructs relationships of support and solidarity online over 7 months using a range of multimodal resources including web links, video clips, avatars and songs. This is a semi-ethnographic case study that arose from my own experiences as a participant in the support group. I gathered the data directly from the WhatsApp facility on a 'smartphone' and then analysed the interactions and their use of diverse resources by means of Interactional Sociolinguistics analysis. The article finds that participants construct support and solidarity in highly inventive ways: by using diverse modes and types of expression, by means of humour, building a 'special' sense of in-group togetherness, and biographical work, that is, recasting 'who they are' in light of their illness.

Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: The discourse of virtual work

“…References to place(s) – whether shared or individual, real or conceptual – do evoke shared physical experiences because they ‘create a scheme of reference against which participants can interpret the actions of others’ (Bjørn and Ngwenyama, 2009: 249). This shared meaning, argues Baxter (2018), can be seen as ‘warrant for immediate intimacy’(p. 15). Although the ethics of the practice (or requirement?)…”

“…Angouri and Marra, 2011). However, the exploration of how people negotiate their individual and social identities in digitally mediated environments tended to focus on social digital spaces and groups (see Baxter, 2018; Graham, 2016) and much less is known about the virtual workplace (for a few exceptions, see Bjørn and Ngwenyama, 2009; Darics, 2010; Laitinen and Valo, 2018). In this article, we go some way to address this gap: we set out to explore, through closely observing naturally occurring interactions in a virtual team, how team members discursively bring their team to life.…”

Avatar-Based Strategies for Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review

“…Of those, 157 were discarded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Therefore, nine papers were selected for a full text reading; six out of these [ 1 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 ] were excluded for various reasons (see Supplementary File S3 ). A total of three publications were finally included [ 61 , 62 , 63 ].…”

‘Feel like going crazy’: Mental health discourses in an online support group for mothers during COVID-19

“…Several research methods were employed. As the first two authors are members of the support group, our research followed a semi-ethnographic method ( Baxter, 2018 ): our participation in the group was initially not research-oriented, but we later became aware of the recurrent discussions surrounding group members’ mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then read through all discussion threads posted from January to July 2020 and identified over 200 threads in which participants talked about their mental health.…”