The meaning of an online health community in the lives of its members: roles, relationships and group dynamics

Maloney-Krichmar, Diane; Preece, Jenny

doi:10.1109/istas.2002.1013791

Cited by 39 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Second, there was a commitment among more active members to developing the site as being open to as many people as possible (Baym, 1998;Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2002), which included an attempt to establish an ethos of uncritical acceptance of people's positions. This, in itself, became part of their joint enterprise (Ridings & Gefen, 2004;Lee & Jang, 2010).…”

Section: If You Get the Chance Pinto Go To Mediation I Cannot Sing mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The overall intention of the research was to trace the development of an informal online community (Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2002;Gray, 2004;Herring, 2004;Cox, 2008;Koliba & Gajda, 2009) on the site during this period and to establish what learning took place (Paechter, 2012). Set up by one man as a social enterprise, Wikivorce initially consisted of a wiki outlining the divorce process and a series of linked asynchronous forums in which people were encouraged to post questions about the legal and financial aspects of divorce, plus a blogging space and, after a couple of months, chat rooms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Online Learning in Divorce: How the Formation of a Community of Practice in a Divorce Support Website Enables and Inhibits Learning

Paechter

2012

E-Learning and Digital Media

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This article is about the informal learning that took place in an online divorce support and advice forum. In it, the author discusses the formation of a community of practice among the members during the first nine months of the site's operation. The author shows how the key markers of mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire developed between members, and argues that the community of practice both enhanced and inhibited learning among its members. In particular, the author suggests that members learned not only the knowledge about divorce law provided by others on the site as a form of public good, but they also learned ways of coping with divorce, with their exspouse and with the legal system generally. At the same time, however, some group practices inhibited learning, both for those participating in the community and for those excluded by members. The author concludes with suggestions for developing similar online communities of practice.

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Section: If You Get the Chance Pinto Go To Mediation I Cannot Sing mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Learning in Divorce: How the Formation of a Community of Practice in a Divorce Support Website Enables and Inhibits Learning

Paechter

2012

E-Learning and Digital Media

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“…For example, communities with a tradition of aggressive responses or put-downs, if they manage to exist at all, will be more like arenas in which there is a relatively small number of participants with many onlookers [4]. Other communities may evolve over time to develop strong norms of acceptable behaviour [3,5]. Both are examples of social adaptations, that is, sociability.…”

Section: Background: Developing Online Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, in one online community studied, interviews with participants revealed that they were happy with an older product and saw no need for upgrading to state-of-the-art software. The major concern for these participants was 24/7 availability of the server and consequent access to their community [3,5].…”

Section: Using Established Techniques For Evaluating Online Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice

Preece

Abras

Maloney-Krichmar

2004

IJWBC

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Abstract:What makes online communities successful? There are many indicators of success. Some are easily observed and measured, such as the number of people registered in the community, or the number who participate, or the number of messages posted, replied to or read over a certain period. How community members judge their community is also important. What do they like or dislike and how committed are they to the community? In this paper, we describe participatory community-centred development -an approach that relies heavily on iterative evaluation. We then point out that standard evaluation techniques are inadequate for evaluating online communities because they do not address sociability. Finally, we propose two approaches from research that can be tailed for evaluating online communities. Both attempt to draw directly on what community users want. The first is rooted in ethnography and the second is a form of heuristic evaluation. The paper ends with an agenda for developing these approaches to make them practical yet robust.

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“They are always there for me”: The convergence of social support and information in an online breast cancer community

Rubenstein

2014

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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This research examines interactions among members of an online breast cancer community, focusing on how information and social support were exchanged, how these exchanges influenced health decisions, and how the community was integrated into participants' everyday lives. This article is the result of a 2‐year ethnography comprising online archives analysis, participant observation, and 31 interviews. In the course of the research, the findings revealed that, not only did participants exchange valuable information and helpful social support, there was often little separation between the two, with each overlaying the other throughout most interactions. Expressions of support permeated many informational messages and at the same time served as information to participants. This article argues that social support and information were inextricably connected within participant interactions and that social support is, itself, a form of information that impacts actions and emotional experiences, contributing to participants being able to make sense of their experiences and to move forward both physically and emotionally. This research builds on work in information science that looks at the ways in which people exchange information in informal environments and extends that research by drawing on conceptualizations of social support to exhibit the connections between social support and information.

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The meaning of an online health community in the lives of its members: roles, relationships and group dynamics

Cited by 39 publications

References 8 publications

Online Learning in Divorce: How the Formation of a Community of Practice in a Divorce Support Website Enables and Inhibits Learning

Online Learning in Divorce: How the Formation of a Community of Practice in a Divorce Support Website Enables and Inhibits Learning

Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice

“They are always there for me”: The convergence of social support and information in an online breast cancer community

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