Social and Psychological Determinants of Levels of Engagement With an Online Breast Cancer Support Group: Posters, Lurkers, and Nonusers

Abstract

Despite the benefits and growing availability of online cancer support groups, many breast cancer patients still do not actively participate in the support groups. To better understand cancer patients’ online information and support seeking behaviors, this study explores how various social and psychological characteristics predict different levels of engagement with an online breast cancer support group: posters, lurkers, and non-users. The study sample included 231 recently diagnosed breast cancer patients. Data included baseline survey scores of demographic, disease-related, and psychosocial factors and automatically collected discussion group use data over the 4-month intervention. Patterns of engagement with the cancer support group differed according to the patients’ characteristics, suggesting that (1) cancer patients have very different orientations to and engagement with an online support group, and (2) ‘deficits’ in social and psychological resources may not be barriers to participation in a cancer support group, but rather motivators to interact with other patients. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Social Networks, Interpersonal Social Support, and Health Outcomes: A Health Communication Perspective

“…These service roles allowed me to watch the development of interesting research findings and theory development in the areas of social support, communication, and health, as well as computermediated communication. As time went on, scholars began to merge theory from both areas in an attempt to make stronger causal claims about the influence of social support network members on specific health outcomes (Han et al, 2012;Liu and Yu, 2013;Oh et al, 2014), by advancing and testing hypotheses stemming from these theoretical frameworks. Numerous extraneous variables and mediating variables have been identified, and they are now being controlled for in much of today's online social networks and health outcomes research.…”

Analyzing Empowerment Processes Among Cancer Patients in an Online Community: A Text Mining Approach (Preprint)

“…The forum posts that we included contained for obvious reasons only utterances from patients that are present online. The estimations of percentages of active and non-active online group member differ from 1 to 10% [33], to a quarter active users [13] to about half of the group members [25,34]. It has been found that posters report higher levels of empowerment than lurkers, even though lurkers also benefit from reading the forum texts [13,25,34].…”

“…Some patients are merely lurkers (i.e., people who read social media but do not write posts), while others are active posters [25][26][27]. Because of these differences, the types of messages patients post online might differ, especially when it comes to empowerment.…”

Consumer use of social media for food risk information: Survey findings in the United States and implications for the Korean context

“…Furthermore, some counterintuitive finding in the U.S. study, such that low-income people usually regarded as being underserved for Internet access were more likely to use social media for food recall information, also warrant future study in Korea. It is plausible that some deficits in resources in a face-to-face context were not barriers to active use of social media for food recalls, but they were rather motivators to use a more engaging communication tool (Han et al, 2012). Risk perception (Rimal & Real, 2003) and perceived trustworthiness of the Internet and that of health professionals (Hou & Shim, 2011;Kivits, 2004) also deserve attention as primary predictors of social media use for food risk information in Korea.…”

“…Based on the CMIS (Johnson, 1997) and supporting evidence in related research(e.g., Carlsson, 2000;Fox & Jones, 2009;Han et al, 2012;Rains, 2007;Tian, Thompson, & Robinson, 2006), the following variables were assessed as the predicting variables.…”