Debate surrounds the rapid development of online communities, whose lack of physical co-location of community members has often been criticized. Are these online communities in fact encouraging empty relationships? However, recent research has shown that online communities can in fact provide the tactical, emotional, and networked support for individuals who can't find it in any other medium. Braithwaite, Waldron, and Finn (1999) illustrated this phenomenon in their study that decoded online messages in disability social support groups. Their coding scheme was based on five factors that were said to be either present or not in messages: information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, and emotional support.
For this assignment, we analyzed 20 messages that were posted to a Usenet group called alt.support.divorce and coded them according to the five types of support behaviors that Braithwaite considered in her study, with the addition of humor. Our results are as follows:
Our results were comparable to hers in that tangible assistance and network support were present in the fewest number of messages. In addition, we found a similar amount of emotional support (40% in her study vs. 50% in ours). Though we discerned esteem support in twice as many messages as in her study (18% vs. 35%), our observation that it was the third most frequent support behavior was in agreement with her results. The biggest difference between our analyses was that we found information in every message that we looked at. Braithwaite detected information in only 31.6% of the messages she coded.
What could account for this difference? One possibility is that discrepancies in support behavior frequency are due to the topic of the discussion group. Braithwaite's study analyzed posts on a forum for people with disabilities, whereas we chose a divorce support forum. In discussing why she found emotional support more often than the other types of support, whereas another study found information to be most common, she referenced the optimal matching model, which suggests that "emotional support is more likely to be given when the recipient is experiencing distressful circumstances that are not subject to his or her control" (Braithwaite 142). Indeed, divorces are relatively more controllable than disabilities, and this would explain why our results varied. Many of our messages focused on giving specific advice (information) regarding how to deal with divorce.
Similarly, the relative amounts of other support behaviors would likely depend on the topic at hand and/or the nature of the group, as well. For example, a forum for alcoholics might contain many references to Alcoholics Anonymous or other communities that can help someone with his or her problems and give network support. In addition, the fact that we and she both found a severe lack of tangible support might suggest that the typical online poster (most likely a stranger) does not have the ability or resources to help another person in a direct manner. Furthermore, the fair amount of esteem support that we found was mainly due to people commenting that one's significant other, rather than the one posting the problem, was the person at fault in a relationship - something that is probably typical in this type of forum. Finally, though humor was present in a few of our messages, it seemed that the severity of the issues being discussed and a desire to be truly supportive prompted most people to be serious and mindful.
The social exchanges that occurred in our group can be analyzed using Walther's four dimensions of online social support as well as Wallace's theory of numbers. Wallace notes that in FtF interaction, the presence of large numbers of people in an emergency causes individuals to diffuse the responsibility to help onto the group members surrounding them. However, she theorizes that online, the numbers of people present in that community are only one factor determining the likelihood of an individual seeking help actually receiving it. Factors (as described by Walther) that affect social support online include: social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and 24/7 access. In the instance of our analyzed group, it is evident that these factors hold true. For instance, participating members of the thread are identified solely by their screen name, making it easy to remain anonymous and share personal information about their marital status, without risking being “caught” by any of their personal acquaintances. Furthermore, if we note the timing of the posts (which is found in the upper right-hand corner) we can see that the times of responses posted vary widely, and are not immediate. Thus, individuals posting are responding whenever they see fit, 24/7. This is noted as more appealing than FtF support, which is often not well thought about because of the immediate nature required of the response.
After decoding 20 messages we also became aware that the individuals posting responses were making great use of the interaction management made available by online social support group. The Hyperpersonal model notes that CMC allows for selective self-presentation, meaning individuals only make available the parts of themselves they choose to online (i.e. physical cues can be eliminated). In the messages we analyzed, this can be seen in the fact that certain individuals chose to omit their sex, while others explicitly defined it. When a male made the initial post of suspecting his wife of cheating, responders often explicitly mentioned their gender to validate their response.
http://groups.google.com/group
http://groups.google.com/group
