8: Shybies and Drugs

Josh and I analyzed a very interesting group on Google groups. It was about support for overcoming shyness. We came across some very interesting and strange posts, as well as some possibly disturbed individuals. The first group was about a guy who had a specific experience with a girl and couldn’t tell if the girl was actually interested in him. He turned to the forum to see if anyone could explain if the girl did or didn’t. The second group was about a man who wanted to use drugs to analyze his mind to figure out why he was shy or depressed. Both of these groups involved pretty strange situations which led us to believe that the responses would be mostly jokes, but it didn’t end up being as predominant as I thought.

% inter-rater reliability			0.825
			frequency	% of msgs
Information			15	0.75
Tangible assistance			2	0.1
Esteem support			8	0.4
Network support			2	0.1
Emotional support			12	0.6
Humor			4	0.2

Our results were moderately different from what is predicted by Braithwaite, but this can be expected because the small sample size.

The two groups had different tones, so they relied more heavily on different sub-categories. The responses of the first group were more emotionally oriented, because the question posed by the creator of the group was very open ended and influenced by personal experience. The second group had the creator asking people for specific advice about past experiences, so it tended elicit informational responses.

Something unique that we noticed about our two groups, was that community showed much tangible assistance. This is defined as a user going out of their way to help somebody else by producing something other than information based on past experiences or psychological support. In fact, there was only one response between both groups that we felt showed this quality. For example, in the group about which drugs to try, nobody ever offered a way for the creator to obtain or learn first-hand about these drugs, they simply offered their own opinions and experiences.

These posts exhibited all four dimensions of attraction to online social support, which include social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. Social distance says that it is easier to talk about awkward things over CMC. This is definitely exhibited by these groups, especially the one concerning drug use. It is much easier to talk about something illegal when you are not face to face or easily identifiable. This description also applies to anonymity. Interaction management and access describe how the users can control the flow of communication, and therefore feel more in control and prone to CMC disclosures. The asynchronicity of this medium allows users to phrase their posts carefully and express exactly what is on their mind. The distributedness allows them to distance themselves further and feel more comfortable. It is easier to share personal problems when there is no chance off anyone knowing who you are. Also, people are more comfortable giving advice without formal education in the subject when they are not liable for incorrect advice.

- My partner was Josh Sirkin, we are both on the Brown blog

Group 1

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.drugs.psychedelics/browse_thread/thread/29893d3683b9feab/c40d4635ae9d7636?hl=en&lnk=st&q=shyness#c40d4635ae9d7636

Group 2

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.drugs.psychedelics/browse_thread/thread/29893d3683b9feab/c40d4635ae9d7636?hl=en&lnk=st&q=shyness#c40d4635ae9d7636