Legitimacy, Authority, and Community in Electronic Support Groups

Abstract

In electronic support groups, people use Internet-based electronic text communication to discuss personal problems or disorders with others who share common circumstances. Although their discussions exist only in the electronic medium, these groups can be viewed usefully as discourse communities. The authors draw on what is known about two other popular sources of help—face-to-face self-help groups and self-help books—to frame the rhetorical challenges faced by members of electronic support groups. The authors then compare the discourse of electronic support groups with that of electronic hobby groups to demonstrate that the two sets differ in terms of the rhetorical behavior of their participants. The authors analyze messages to determine how members establish legitimacy and authority in their texts and how message exchange gives rise to group identity and a sense of community. Our observations indicate that although some discourse characteristics and some rhetorical features are common to all the electronic groups we studied, others are unique to the special requirements of electronic support groups.

Engagement in a newly launched online support community for complex regional pain syndrome: membership growth, header analysis and introductory messages

“…Established online support communities typically have more members, may produce more messages per day, but can receive fewer replies per thread. For example, an eating disorders group with 70 members produced 4.4 messages per day and 6.4 replies per thread (Winzelberg, 1997), and groups for arthritis (16,000 members), attention deficits (18,000 members) and depression (23,000 members) produced an overall mean of 74 messages per day and 3.5 replies per thread (Galegher et al, 1998). …”

“…A range of statistical data has been examined including the number of messages posted each day, the number of replies received, how long it takes to receive a reply, and the time of day when messages are posted (Boberg et al, 1995;Galegher et al, 1998;Winzelberg, 1997). To date, no studies have analysed header information in CRPS forums.…”

“…Although these are legitimate components of engagement, we argue that engagement is a broader concept requiring further elaboration. A small but growing body of research has considered engagement from alternative perspectives such as membership growth (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009), header analysis (Galegher, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1998;Winzelberg, 1997) and introductory messages (Barak et al, 2008;Galegher et al, 1998).…”

“…Individuals may use their first post to talk about their medical history (Armstrong, Koteyko, & Powell, 2012), in effect telling their 'disease story'. This helps the individual to establish legitimacy (why they have joined) and authority (why others should listen and reply) within the group (Galegher et al, 1998).…”

A Far Cry from School History: Massive Online Open Courses as a Generative Source for Historical Research

“…These comments include help-seeking from other learners, reflections on course content, emotional vocabulary, clarifications, and personal narratives (Goldberg et al, 2015;Huang et al, 2014;Koutropoulos et al, 2012). Disclosure of personal narrative information in online discussion communities has been found to be an important prerequisite for community membership (Burke, Kraut, & Joyce, 2010), legitimacy (Galegher, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1998), and social interaction.…”