You Get What You Give: Understanding Reply Reciprocity and Social Capital in Online Health Support Forums

Abstract

Adopting a social network analysis approach, the present study examined social capital and network dynamics of online support seeking and support provision in a depression forum. We constructed a depression forum network by mapping out all of the users and the reply ties among them. The findings showed a consistently reciprocal pattern between users' replies sent to others and replies received from others. Forum users' bridging social capital was positively associated with the source diversity of their received replies and negatively associated with the average length of their received replies. Furthermore, forum users' bonding social capital was positively associated with the average length of their received replies and negatively associated with the source diversity of their received replies.

The Role of Online Discussion Forums in Newcomers' Labour Market Integration in Canada

“…The number of threads (i.e., discussion topics) and posts (i.e., replies) increased by about 37% and 31% respectively as well. Online discussion forums have been examined in several areas of research, including education (e.g., Griesbaum et al, 2015;Seethamraju, 2014), health (e.g., Brady et al, 2016;Lee, 2017;Kim and Sundar, 2016;Moore and Ayers, 2017;Pan et al, 2017), and psychology (e.g., McKiernan et al, 2017;Tabor and Milfont, 2013;Zhao and Basnyat, 2018). Although the process of global migration and importance of employment on newcomers' adjustment has been researched extensively and for several decades (e.g., Boyd, 1989;Choldin, 1973;Crowley-Henry, 2013;Dietz et al, 2015;Guo and Al Ariss, 2015;Hansen, 2012;Massey et al, 1993;Reitz et al, 2014;Taylor, 1999), there is a lack of international business research using data from online forums and our understanding of the role of online forums in newcomers' labour market integration in a new environment is very limited (Caidi et al, 2014;Tabor and Milfont, 2013).…”

“…Computer mediated communications refer to interactions carried out by the use of Internet based technologies that facilitate interactions between individuals or among groups, such as online discussion forums, blogs, social network sites (e.g., Facebook), e-mail, and instant messaging (Rains, 2016;Rains and Wright, 2016). In the context of computer mediated communication and newcomers' labour market integration in the new country, social support refers to communication that helps individuals manage uncertainty and ambiguity about the new country's labour market environment and increases their perceptions of control regarding life through online interactions (Albrecht and Adelman, 1987;Goldsmith and Albrecht, 2011;Lin et al, 2016;Pan et al, 2017;. Social support mitigates the uncertainty, ambiguity and anxiety, which are key barriers to newcomers' adjustment to foreign environments.…”

“…Recent research examining computer mediated social support in the context of health also shows that the extent of action-facilitating and nurturant types of support vary for the health problems that are more or less controllable (Buis and Whitten, 2011;Coursaris and Liu, 2009;Fukkink, 2011;Moore and Ayers, 2017;Mo and Coulson, 2008;Pan et al, 2017;Rains et al, 2015;Zhao and Basnyat, 2018). A review and examination of 41 studies that used content analysis to study computer mediated social support messages in the context of health also shows that the messages with nurturing types of support (e.g., emotional and companionship) are more prevalent when the illness is less controllable (e.g., terminal illness or health condition with a higher probability for death), while the messages with action facilitating types of support (e.g., informational and instrumental) are more common when the health conditions are more controllable (e.g., chronic or long term) (Rains et al, 2015).…”

“…Examination of relevant extant research on online silence, lurkers, and online participation, as well as further examinations of the online forum data suggest that there may be several possible factors influencing higher no response rates in online discussion forums, including: usability, reciprocity, member ranking, online identity, group versus individual communication, asynchronous communications, and group identity Gao and Zhou, 2017;Lim et al, 2013;Pan et al, 2017;Rains and Wright, 2016;Sun et al, 2014;Tang and Yang, 2012;van Mierlo, 2014;Zhang, 2010;Zhou, 2011). Although the literature suggests several possible factors, it was not possible to examine the role of many of these factors using the data collected for this study.…”

“…Research identified several factors influencing active participation in computer mediated communications, including usability, reciprocity, member rankings, online identity, group versus individual communication, and asynchronous communications Gao and Zhou, 2017;Pan et al, 2017;Rains and Wright, 2016;Sun et al, 2014;van Mierlo, 2014). These factors are briefly discussed below.…”