It seems like these days everyone uses the internet, so diagnosing Problematic Internet Use (PIU) would appear to be a much more difficult task than in the past. This proves to be the case for many of us who perform daily tasks through our use of the internet, but then there are those who are more or less hindered by the accessibility of the internet and what it can bring to you with one click of the mouse. I find that PIU, defined as problematic behavior related to too much time online, can be associated with the wonders of eBay.
Wallace devoted one section of chapter 9 discussing the online auction that has allowed for many small businesses to reach shoppers around the world and has served as "the largest flea market in the history of the planet" (Wallace p.177). eBay may indeed become addictive for those who like to be thrifty and cannot pass up a chance to collect some rare antique on the other side of the world. This case holds true for a particular engineer on our very own campus who is obsessed with eBay. Rather, he is obsessed with purchasing little $7 figurines, which are only made available in Asia, off of eBay. His collection has grown quite large and his appetite is insatiable, for he is constantly scouring the pages of eBay looking for the next available figurine. Friends who have classes with him comment on it often, such as at lunch yesterday. One friend remarked "(Blank) is obsessed with those figurines. Sometimes I'll look over on his computer screen during class and you will see these little figurines on his screen because he's on eBay." The discussion furthered to emphasize that he probably would not have such an obsession if it wasn't so easy for him to purchase these figurines through eBay.
Has this engineer reached a point diagnosable of problematic internet use? I would say not quite since his friends do not seem too concerned about his little obsession and he seems to still value himself as a part of Cornell society. However, he may be working on two of the four dimensions in Davis et al. PIU study. The two relevant dimensions include diminshed impulse control and distraction/procastination. In our engineer's case, he seems to slowly be creeping towards both of these dimensions since he is slowly losing all control over the amount of time he spends on eBay and cannot control his desire to bid on/purchase these figurines. In addition, it has become a distraction for him, as evidenced by the fact that he will scour eBay for his figurines over paying attention in his engineering classes.
Since I do not know this engineer personally, I cannot say that Caplan's Theory may be applied to his case. His friends, however, do not express too much concern over his need for these figurines. His grades are being maintained and he is still an active participant in society. He is also very social, so it would be safe to say that his use of the internet is not due to psychosocial problems or more positive feelings towards the internet space over real space.
This particular space, use of eBay as a time sink, gives more credit to the affordances and features of the internet over individual psychological differences. In our engineer's case, he would not otherwise be able to purchase these figurines if it were not for eBay connecting him to markets overseas. This proves that the internet is feeding his obsession due to its accessibility, anonymity (Maybe he'd be a little more embarrassed if he had to purchase in person. He is a senior in college afterall), ease of purchase and cheap prices. In a broader scope, the over excessive use of eBay could apply to any person who finds that the online auction is a fascinating place to find anything you want. The power that could be felt from winning the highest bid could be addictive for some, or the mere ability to own things at a click of a button could keep many spending more time online browsing than interacting with others.
http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-9-picking-up-girls-online.html
http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-i-swear-this-is-last-video-i-click-on.html
Friday, November 2, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Assignment8
In this survey, we took a thread that a father is worried because his daughter doesn't eat food. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.depression/browse_thread/thread/467e40122ae80a49/3b883a7a712e8ca5#3b883a7a712e8ca5 And we coded 20 messages. The result is information support-13, tangible assistance-0, esteem support-5, network support-0, emotional support-6, humor-2. And that means information support is the prevalent as 65%, emotional support is far second 30%, followed by esteem support 25%. This is different from Braithwaite's result. And we think there are several reasons contributing to this difference.The first one, Braithwaite's experimental object is an inability community. Most people leave messages or reply to show their care and the willingness to help. Except for this emotional care, most people actually can give little virtual help. For example, we common people mostly are impossible to cure a handicapped person, but we really can give a lot of emotional support and encouragement through messages. So at first, we want to find a thread that focus on "homesick". Because we think although we can't get the homesick people back to their home, we can give our support through words. We assume that would come out a similar result to the inability community in Braithwaite's experiment. But unlucky, we didn't find one. In that thread, the father is worried about the daughter's eating problem. In this case, most people can give some advice on how to settle this problem, like go to a doctor, don't force her to eat, or play with her when eating. So this seems a problem we common people really can help to solve, so people give more informative support. And as we also think the father is really a great one, and we give esteem support and emotional support. And we also find that, the first few messages are all informative messages focus on how to make her eat, only after the father reply "She is eating an apple now. I am relieved", more people began to change their focus on "You are a good dad". Thus we conclude that people give more informative support when they can solve the problems; and tend to give more emotional support when they can't give actual help.The second one, the number of the sample is very different between mine and Braithwaite. In the survey, there are only 20 messages. As we mentioned above, people first tend to give solutions, and them tend to encourage the father and appreciate him as a good father. So, we think it’s safe to assume that, at first, people give informative support messages. But after a few message, maybe 30, maybe 50, they find that most people can find only the same 5 or 6 ways to let the little girl eat. So then they instead tend to encourage the father, tell him not to be upset, tell him to be optimistic, and tell him he is a good father, that is, emotional support. Because at this situation, they can't find any more solutions and what they can give is emotional support. But, in fact, as there are not too many messages here, we can't check whether it goes on as we assumed. Maybe when there are 400 messages replying the father, the result is totally different.The third one, we can't tell how many and what supports one message gives very accurately. And as the sample number is really small. A little mistake may result in a great difference when turned into percentage. And we didn't find any tangible and network support in the messages, we can't tell how much these factors really weigh.So, as a whole, the category of the object community, the hardness for us to give actually physical or material support; the volume of the sample, number; the validity of telling every support contained in a message really affect the result a lot. And in the survey, informative support is the prevalent support.
Posted also by Xiangning li (Green)
Posted also by Xiangning li (Green)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Assignment 8: They Say That Breaking Up Is Hard To Do...
Tim Scott (Purple) Caton McKenna (Green) Aaron Sherbany (Brown)
In this study, Braithwaite et al. used a coding scheme, comprised of five different categories, to examine patterns between support messages exchanged online. The five categories used in the scheme were information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, and emotional support. The frequencies at which each of these categories were present within the messages studied by Braithwaite et al. were 31.3%, 2.7%, 18.6%, 7.1%, and 40%, respectively.
When our group examined the nature of messages in online support groups we found our results to be very similar to those of Braithwaithe.
| % inter-rater reliability | 0.766667 | |
| | frequency | % of msgs |
| Information | 12 | 0.6 |
| Tangible Assistance | 2 | 0.1 |
| Esteem Support | 10 | 0.5 |
| Network Support | 0 | 0 |
| Emotional Support | 17 | 0.85 |
| Humor | 2 | 0.1 |
Although the actual percentages are different than Braithwaithe’s, the categories that he found in high frequency are the same as the categories that we found in high frequency. Information was frequent (60%), tangible assistance was quite infrequent (10%), esteem support was a common feature of messages (50%), network support was none existent, and emotional support was very prevalent (85%). It is likely that if we gathered our data from a larger sampling of posts, the discrepancy between values we obtained and values Braithwaithe obtained would be even less significant. Percentages for network support may also differ because network support implies physical connection problems, which existed during Braithwaite’s study in 1999, but are becoming anachronistic today.
In addition to the five categories examined by Braithwaite, we also added a new category, humor. In our study we found humor to be present at a relatively low frequency (10%) which may be attributed to a number of things. The most likely cause, however, is that the overall somber mood of Gutterboy’s experience discouraged the use of humor in reply posts.
It is very obvious from looking at this online support group that finding help online is quite easy, contrary to what Patricia Wallace said in her book, The Psychology of the Internet. Instead of corresponding to the ideas presented by Wallace, we found that the results of our study corresponded much more closely with the ideas offered by Walther & Boyd, who presented four features of the internet that make it an appealing place to find support. These features are social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. The fact that Gutterboy posted online shows that he understands that he is more likely to find support from a wide range of knowledgeable people online, which is the idea of social distance. The concepts of anonymity and interaction management can be seen by examining the posts. It is likely that many of those offering their support in online posts would not be comfortable in doing so face to face. The support messages also show a lot of thought on behalf of the poster, suggesting that they took a great deal of time to craft their post to purvey the message in the way that they desired. The final feature presented by Walther and Boyd, access, is easy to spot in this online support group. Gutterboy posted his story at 3:00 am, and immediately received a number of reply posts offering support. One poster even seemed to have an excellent grasp on the idea of access, as evidenced by the following statement: That's the wonderful thing about email and ngs... somewhere in the world SOMEBODY is awake when you are, no matter what time it is.
Wallace hypothesized that the large numbers of people present online would make it difficult to find support, since it would decrease the effect of the presence of an individual and cause a diffusion of responsibility. After examining an online support group, it is evident that this is not the case. Gutterboy found help when he sought support online, with most of it coming in the forms of emotional support, esteem support, and information. Additionally, the concepts of social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access all worked together to make the internet an ideal place for Gutterboy to find support after his break up. It is these same four concepts that will continue to drive people to seek support in online spaces for many years to come.
Link
Note: Examined the messages from Jacqueline to Nick the Lemming
8: Social Support All Over the Internet
According to our results, we are technically unreliable, with an inter-rater reliability of .616, but despite our results, we do have a better understanding of the different types of social support and what can be categorized as information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, emotional support, and humor.
In our study, we each found 10 threads and then compiled them together; we first coded our own threads and then each other’s. Our threads did not come from the same post or the same support group – there were five main posts where we got the threads from among four different support groups: shyness, college admissions, grief, and singles. There were five threads from shyness, three threads from college admissions, two threads from grief, and ten threads from singles.
Even though our inter-reliability percent was unreliable, our results were similar to Braithwaite in terms of the amounts of the different types of social support found. We found the most evidence of information support (20%), esteem support (10%), and emotional support (7%). While these three types of support were also the top three types of support that Braithwaite found, Braithwaite’s percentages of each type of support were different. She found the most evidence of emotional support, then information, and esteem support. We are not really sure why our top three results were different from Braithwaite’s, but we believe it may be due to the types of threads we looked at. For example, the threads in the singles group consisted of short responses to a question that one blogger posed. The question was general and the main post did not include many feelings. So while there was information in most of these threads, there was not as much emotional or esteem support since there was no need to really validate, sympathize, empathize or relieve from blame. In addition to these results, we also found 3% of both network support and humor and did not find any type of tangible assistance.
After discussing our coding decisions, we figured out why our inter-reliability rating was unreliable. There were two main conflicts about the different types of support. The first disagreement was about the difference between information and tangible assistance. One of us considered information as being advice, referrals, and situation appraisal while the other person considered some referrals to be tangible assistance. We talked and then agreed that tangible assistance could only be some kind of physical thing and that referrals and references should be classified as information. After coming to this decision, when we looked back through the threads we found no evidence of tangible assistance. The second conflict was over network support. One person only considered there to be network support if there was a reference to the network in the post such as “post more, we want to listen” or “we need more information,” while the other person considered most of the threads network support because of the overall idea of blogging in a group. Again, we came to an agreement and decided that for there to be network support, there would have to be reference to the presence of the group or people in the group.
When comparing our results to Wallace’s ideas about helping and the numbers factors, we disagreed with this idea. Wallace believes that increased numbers of people reduces helping behavior because of decreased noticeability and diffusion of responsibility. But online, we saw that even a common question, such as “How do I know if a girl likes me” was answered by ten people. We found so many different threads that contained information, emotional, and esteem support, that it is hard to automatically agree with Wallace. We think that because we cannot use others to interpret our environment on the internet, one may find more helping behavior in this anonymous setting. Our results seem to align better with Walther and Boyd’s results where online, anonymity increases the ability to avoid embarrassment and increases one’s confidence in providing support. Social distance, interaction management, and access also play a role in the online support system and may influence people to be more helpful online than offline.
By: Stefani Negrin (Purple Blog) & Whitney Brenner (Green Blog)
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/410d0f8d3510ae6/2874d813b9bd0eb4?lnk=st&q=how+can+tell+difference+between+a+girl+who+is+interested#2874d813b9bd0eb4
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.college.admissions/browse_thread/thread/cd7549b43f6510f9/c3b7264aa6a72249?lnk=st&q=alt.support.college#
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.grief/browse_thread/thread/65f5c0e8e5ca7439/d9040fcec8ea9053#d9040fcec8ea9053
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/410d0f8d3510ae6/2874d813b9bd0eb4?lnk=st&q=On+Thursday+this+girl+came+into+my+shop#2874d813b9bd0eb4
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.singles/browse_thread/thread/28f479de02104334/51e2bdb4aa90dc15?lnk=st&q=Nervousness+and+Dating#51e2bdb4aa90dc15
In our study, we each found 10 threads and then compiled them together; we first coded our own threads and then each other’s. Our threads did not come from the same post or the same support group – there were five main posts where we got the threads from among four different support groups: shyness, college admissions, grief, and singles. There were five threads from shyness, three threads from college admissions, two threads from grief, and ten threads from singles.
Even though our inter-reliability percent was unreliable, our results were similar to Braithwaite in terms of the amounts of the different types of social support found. We found the most evidence of information support (20%), esteem support (10%), and emotional support (7%). While these three types of support were also the top three types of support that Braithwaite found, Braithwaite’s percentages of each type of support were different. She found the most evidence of emotional support, then information, and esteem support. We are not really sure why our top three results were different from Braithwaite’s, but we believe it may be due to the types of threads we looked at. For example, the threads in the singles group consisted of short responses to a question that one blogger posed. The question was general and the main post did not include many feelings. So while there was information in most of these threads, there was not as much emotional or esteem support since there was no need to really validate, sympathize, empathize or relieve from blame. In addition to these results, we also found 3% of both network support and humor and did not find any type of tangible assistance.
After discussing our coding decisions, we figured out why our inter-reliability rating was unreliable. There were two main conflicts about the different types of support. The first disagreement was about the difference between information and tangible assistance. One of us considered information as being advice, referrals, and situation appraisal while the other person considered some referrals to be tangible assistance. We talked and then agreed that tangible assistance could only be some kind of physical thing and that referrals and references should be classified as information. After coming to this decision, when we looked back through the threads we found no evidence of tangible assistance. The second conflict was over network support. One person only considered there to be network support if there was a reference to the network in the post such as “post more, we want to listen” or “we need more information,” while the other person considered most of the threads network support because of the overall idea of blogging in a group. Again, we came to an agreement and decided that for there to be network support, there would have to be reference to the presence of the group or people in the group.
When comparing our results to Wallace’s ideas about helping and the numbers factors, we disagreed with this idea. Wallace believes that increased numbers of people reduces helping behavior because of decreased noticeability and diffusion of responsibility. But online, we saw that even a common question, such as “How do I know if a girl likes me” was answered by ten people. We found so many different threads that contained information, emotional, and esteem support, that it is hard to automatically agree with Wallace. We think that because we cannot use others to interpret our environment on the internet, one may find more helping behavior in this anonymous setting. Our results seem to align better with Walther and Boyd’s results where online, anonymity increases the ability to avoid embarrassment and increases one’s confidence in providing support. Social distance, interaction management, and access also play a role in the online support system and may influence people to be more helpful online than offline.
By: Stefani Negrin (Purple Blog) & Whitney Brenner (Green Blog)
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/410d0f8d3510ae6/2874d813b9bd0eb4?lnk=st&q=how+can+tell+difference+between+a+girl+who+is+interested#2874d813b9bd0eb4
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.college.admissions/browse_thread/thread/cd7549b43f6510f9/c3b7264aa6a72249?lnk=st&q=alt.support.college#
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.grief/browse_thread/thread/65f5c0e8e5ca7439/d9040fcec8ea9053#d9040fcec8ea9053
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/410d0f8d3510ae6/2874d813b9bd0eb4?lnk=st&q=On+Thursday+this+girl+came+into+my+shop#2874d813b9bd0eb4
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.singles/browse_thread/thread/28f479de02104334/51e2bdb4aa90dc15?lnk=st&q=Nervousness+and+Dating#51e2bdb4aa90dc15
Assignment 8: Less than helpful support groups
Post also completed by Colleen O’Shea (red)
At first, we had trouble finding a discussion board that consisted of people giving support to the group without simply mouthing off and responding in an irritable or joking manner. For this reason, we coded messages from four different threads, but all within the general topic of parents. We coded based on whether the message contained information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, emotional support and humor, and then determined our inter-relater reliability based on whether or not we agreed.
% inter-rater reliability 0.9666667
Frequency % of msgs
Information 11 .55
Tangible assistance 1 .05
Esteem support 6 .3
Network support 6 .3
Emotional support 4 .2
Humor 11 .55
The inter-relater reliability is the correlation between coders. We got a high percentage of 96.67%, meaning that we agreed on almost all of Braithwaite’s types of support behaviors, information, esteem…etc. This data can be considered reliable because and inter-rater reliability of greater than .7, or 70%, is considered reliable while anything under is not considered reliable data.
Our inter-rater reliability finding is much higher than those in Braithwaite’s study, 80% (p. 132) for multiple reasons. First, we were not subcategorizing any of the behaviors; for example, as opposed to breaking down information into advice, referral, situation approval, and teaching, we grouped the four into one broad category of information. Because of this, if we believed that there was any type of information, we could say yes and not have to categorize the type of information. Another reason that ours may have been higher could be from the fact that prior to looking at the messages on the discussion board, we went over together the groups and discussed what they meant and their definitions, assuring that we had the same or similar ideas and criteria for judging the messages. Therefore, being that we were assessing base don the same definitions, we had a much high instance of agreeing. Finally, the fact that the messages that we found were “less than helpful monkeys,” (if you have ever seen the SIMS2 commercial, you know what we’re talking about), it made categorizing much easier. For example, many of the posts were extremely short and many were very humorous, not providing much other than criticism and mocking.
For example, in the following message board, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.attn-deficit/browse_thread/thread/9f59140bce520a8/fba76beedef61b2c?lnk=st&q=parents+of+add+children#fba76beedef61b2c, one of the posts consisted only of the words “oh pishaw,” which is obviously very straight forward as far as the social behavior categorizing went. This is why there are so many posts consisting of humorous social behavior, 55%. We feel that this is probably due to Walther and Boyd’s anonymity dimension of attraction to online social support. The posters have an increased ability to say whatever they want and avoid embarrassment or seeming disagreeable or negative toward the one needing support. Another dimension of attraction that allows the posters to say what they feel, such as insulting ones needing support, is the idea of social distance. Because the online supporters are not insulting them to their face, they feel that they have fewer restrictions and are more likely to be open and honest.
The other message boards that we coded were the following:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.single-parents/browse_thread/thread/a4cbb21c70fdfb5f/ebe32f16e763b2ae?lnk=st&q=single+parent+support#ebe32f16e763b2ae
messages 1-2
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc/browse_thread/thread/1d0e7d430caf7ea0/69d61d8a072a7e1a?lnk=st&q=children+with+disabilities#69d61d8a072a7e1a
messages 3-9
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.down-syn/browse_thread/thread/a493fca6c65bd043/c7332d612af3f366?lnk=st&q=parents+of+children+with+disabilities+#c7332d612af3f366
message 10
At first, we had trouble finding a discussion board that consisted of people giving support to the group without simply mouthing off and responding in an irritable or joking manner. For this reason, we coded messages from four different threads, but all within the general topic of parents. We coded based on whether the message contained information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support, emotional support and humor, and then determined our inter-relater reliability based on whether or not we agreed.
% inter-rater reliability 0.9666667
Frequency % of msgs
Information 11 .55
Tangible assistance 1 .05
Esteem support 6 .3
Network support 6 .3
Emotional support 4 .2
Humor 11 .55
The inter-relater reliability is the correlation between coders. We got a high percentage of 96.67%, meaning that we agreed on almost all of Braithwaite’s types of support behaviors, information, esteem…etc. This data can be considered reliable because and inter-rater reliability of greater than .7, or 70%, is considered reliable while anything under is not considered reliable data.
Our inter-rater reliability finding is much higher than those in Braithwaite’s study, 80% (p. 132) for multiple reasons. First, we were not subcategorizing any of the behaviors; for example, as opposed to breaking down information into advice, referral, situation approval, and teaching, we grouped the four into one broad category of information. Because of this, if we believed that there was any type of information, we could say yes and not have to categorize the type of information. Another reason that ours may have been higher could be from the fact that prior to looking at the messages on the discussion board, we went over together the groups and discussed what they meant and their definitions, assuring that we had the same or similar ideas and criteria for judging the messages. Therefore, being that we were assessing base don the same definitions, we had a much high instance of agreeing. Finally, the fact that the messages that we found were “less than helpful monkeys,” (if you have ever seen the SIMS2 commercial, you know what we’re talking about), it made categorizing much easier. For example, many of the posts were extremely short and many were very humorous, not providing much other than criticism and mocking.
For example, in the following message board, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.attn-deficit/browse_thread/thread/9f59140bce520a8/fba76beedef61b2c?lnk=st&q=parents+of+add+children#fba76beedef61b2c, one of the posts consisted only of the words “oh pishaw,” which is obviously very straight forward as far as the social behavior categorizing went. This is why there are so many posts consisting of humorous social behavior, 55%. We feel that this is probably due to Walther and Boyd’s anonymity dimension of attraction to online social support. The posters have an increased ability to say whatever they want and avoid embarrassment or seeming disagreeable or negative toward the one needing support. Another dimension of attraction that allows the posters to say what they feel, such as insulting ones needing support, is the idea of social distance. Because the online supporters are not insulting them to their face, they feel that they have fewer restrictions and are more likely to be open and honest.
The other message boards that we coded were the following:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.single-parents/browse_thread/thread/a4cbb21c70fdfb5f/ebe32f16e763b2ae?lnk=st&q=single+parent+support#ebe32f16e763b2ae
messages 1-2
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc/browse_thread/thread/1d0e7d430caf7ea0/69d61d8a072a7e1a?lnk=st&q=children+with+disabilities#69d61d8a072a7e1a
messages 3-9
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.down-syn/browse_thread/thread/a493fca6c65bd043/c7332d612af3f366?lnk=st&q=parents+of+children+with+disabilities+#c7332d612af3f366
message 10
Monday, October 29, 2007
Making Friends with Strangers!!! Online Social Support (8)
Alison Wollenberg and I (Talia Wissner-Levy) met up together to decode social support messages on Google groups. We found that many of the threads in the support groups had spam e-mails or news articles were simply copied from Reuters and pasted in the thread. Because of difficulty finding threads that had in-depth analysis and many responses to a user's query, and the abundance of spam, we analyzed support messages from different social groups and threads.
We categorized the messages according to 5 categories: informational support (which includes giving advice, referral to expertise, situation appraisal, and teaching), tangible support (any physical, clear benefit which performs a direct task), esteem support (elevates the sense of self with compliments, validation and relief from blame), network support (which provides access through members to professional services, helps with presence and companionship of other members), and emotional support (which includes the use of relationships, affection, confidentiality, understanding, empathy and any use of emotions). In addition to these characteristics, we also looked at the frequency of humor (which we defined as: 'anything intended to amuse'). These different types of messages are not mutually exclusive, therefore many different categories can be found in one message.
Our results found that we had a significant rate of inter-rater reliability (75.8%). This means that there was a significant amount of agreement between the two of us on the coding of the types of support behavior. Similar to the study by Braithwaite et al. (1999), we found that emotional and information support were two of the most common types of support. Tangible and network support were the two types of support that were least frequent in social support messages. Unlike the study by Braithwaite where emotional support was the most frequent behavior (40% of total messages) and information support came a close second (31.3% of total messages), we found that emotional support was not as frequent as information support. In our study, information support was by far the most frequent support behavior (80% chance to be found within a given message) while emotional support was a more distant second (60%). In both studies, esteem support was the intermediary social behavior. Network support was the least frequent method of support in our study (10% chance to be found withing a given message), while tangible assistance followed with 25%. In contrast, tangible assistance was found to be the least frequent support behavior (2.7% of total), with network support second to last (7.1% of total).
A possible reason as to why we obtained different results than Braithwaite may be because some support groups we looked at contained advice and information on drugs used for medical purposes. Anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication support groups contained more information that used more objective advice of dosage, side effects, and referral to proper psychiatrists who could prescribe a different medication. For example, Anne is giving advice to Tony who is having adverse side effects to Paxil, to switch to Celexa "With Celexa I haven't had to increase (20 mg) at all. So it's probably worth trying a switch if your pdoc thinks the med is the problem."
We viewed quite a few tangible assistance behaviors under one thread discussing a widow's loneliness whereby some users referred the 49 year old widow "ensoul" to specific church groups, giving the website URL, and other specific information to come into contact with the Unitarian Universalist Church. This may have affected our data in emphasizing tangible assistance since we used a number of messages from this thread in our analysis.
Walther and Boyd (2003) have four factors into why people use online social support, and this is manifest in some of the messages we analyzed. Social support online is used due to the social distance, in which users appreciate the distance that the Internet allows as well as the wider range of expertise. For instance, in one post we noted a man named Tony ask for advice on continuing his current dosage of Zoloft prescription he finds it no longer effective. Clearly, he trusts the expertise of the wide variety of Internet group users enough to ask them for advice about such important matters as his medication. Another factor of why online social support is attractive to users is due to anonymity. Many users may feel that their problems are too embarrassing, or their advice is not valid to ask or answer to those close to them in face to face situations. In a post, Emily acknowledges that her fear of clowns "may be weird", but she urgently requests the help of others. Interactive management also allows a user to discontinue the online relationship and phrase their problem as they would like it to be evaluated. Interactive control is also found in a post we analyzed that looked asked for a strange sort of advice: "tell me your life story that is hopefully more pathetic than mine thus making me feel better" says user Omgyjya, asking the posters to exercise interactive control over the type of comfort messages they provide him/her. The last factor is 24/7 access to computers, making a user feel comfortable in reaching out for help any time of the day or week, so that synchronous or time related problems ina sking for advice are not an issue.
Last but not least, humor played a role in our study as it did in Braithwaite's. Some humorous messages included advice to a 27 year old who felt sexually inexperienced to get "a lot of imaginery practice" as well as to a widow to take advantages of toast in not having to cook for two.
Links
OCD
27 Year Old Virgin
Fear of Clowns
Sex Addiction
Zoloft
Depressed 21 year old
How to know you're depressed
Paxil mania
Lonely widow
Weight Loss
We categorized the messages according to 5 categories: informational support (which includes giving advice, referral to expertise, situation appraisal, and teaching), tangible support (any physical, clear benefit which performs a direct task), esteem support (elevates the sense of self with compliments, validation and relief from blame), network support (which provides access through members to professional services, helps with presence and companionship of other members), and emotional support (which includes the use of relationships, affection, confidentiality, understanding, empathy and any use of emotions). In addition to these characteristics, we also looked at the frequency of humor (which we defined as: 'anything intended to amuse'). These different types of messages are not mutually exclusive, therefore many different categories can be found in one message.
Our results found that we had a significant rate of inter-rater reliability (75.8%). This means that there was a significant amount of agreement between the two of us on the coding of the types of support behavior. Similar to the study by Braithwaite et al. (1999), we found that emotional and information support were two of the most common types of support. Tangible and network support were the two types of support that were least frequent in social support messages. Unlike the study by Braithwaite where emotional support was the most frequent behavior (40% of total messages) and information support came a close second (31.3% of total messages), we found that emotional support was not as frequent as information support. In our study, information support was by far the most frequent support behavior (80% chance to be found within a given message) while emotional support was a more distant second (60%). In both studies, esteem support was the intermediary social behavior. Network support was the least frequent method of support in our study (10% chance to be found withing a given message), while tangible assistance followed with 25%. In contrast, tangible assistance was found to be the least frequent support behavior (2.7% of total), with network support second to last (7.1% of total).A possible reason as to why we obtained different results than Braithwaite may be because some support groups we looked at contained advice and information on drugs used for medical purposes. Anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication support groups contained more information that used more objective advice of dosage, side effects, and referral to proper psychiatrists who could prescribe a different medication. For example, Anne is giving advice to Tony who is having adverse side effects to Paxil, to switch to Celexa "With Celexa I haven't had to increase (20 mg) at all. So it's probably worth trying a switch if your pdoc thinks the med is the problem."
We viewed quite a few tangible assistance behaviors under one thread discussing a widow's loneliness whereby some users referred the 49 year old widow "ensoul" to specific church groups, giving the website URL, and other specific information to come into contact with the Unitarian Universalist Church. This may have affected our data in emphasizing tangible assistance since we used a number of messages from this thread in our analysis.
Walther and Boyd (2003) have four factors into why people use online social support, and this is manifest in some of the messages we analyzed. Social support online is used due to the social distance, in which users appreciate the distance that the Internet allows as well as the wider range of expertise. For instance, in one post we noted a man named Tony ask for advice on continuing his current dosage of Zoloft prescription he finds it no longer effective. Clearly, he trusts the expertise of the wide variety of Internet group users enough to ask them for advice about such important matters as his medication. Another factor of why online social support is attractive to users is due to anonymity. Many users may feel that their problems are too embarrassing, or their advice is not valid to ask or answer to those close to them in face to face situations. In a post, Emily acknowledges that her fear of clowns "may be weird", but she urgently requests the help of others. Interactive management also allows a user to discontinue the online relationship and phrase their problem as they would like it to be evaluated. Interactive control is also found in a post we analyzed that looked asked for a strange sort of advice: "tell me your life story that is hopefully more pathetic than mine thus making me feel better" says user Omgyjya, asking the posters to exercise interactive control over the type of comfort messages they provide him/her. The last factor is 24/7 access to computers, making a user feel comfortable in reaching out for help any time of the day or week, so that synchronous or time related problems ina sking for advice are not an issue.
Last but not least, humor played a role in our study as it did in Braithwaite's. Some humorous messages included advice to a 27 year old who felt sexually inexperienced to get "a lot of imaginery practice" as well as to a widow to take advantages of toast in not having to cook for two.
Links
OCD
27 Year Old Virgin
Fear of Clowns
Sex Addiction
Zoloft
Depressed 21 year old
How to know you're depressed
Paxil mania
Lonely widow
Weight Loss
Online support for everyone: Aggressive women & Shy men
Su Cho (sc426): Purple
Rui Jian (rj79): Brown
For our blog assignment, Rui and I read entries done in two usenet social networks: Both groups came up as results of keywords "relationship, advice." The first thread involved a female asking advices on how to get her boyfriend to settle with only her. In two threads, a shy male sought tips on interpreting female behaviors and values. We analyzed 20 responses in total.
According to Brainwaite et al, online social groups show 5 major types of support: information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support and emotional support. Informational support, “includes messages that conveyed instructions, including advice, referrals to experts, situation appraisal, and teaching. Messages coded as information support appeared to reduce uncertainty or help make life more predictable for the message recipient.” (Braithwaite, 133)
Tangible assistance includes concrete, physical actions the sender offers to take, in support of the recipient (such as performing a direct task, performing an indirect task, loaning, active participation and expressing willingness). Esteem support concentrates on validating sense of self-worth. Network support “involves messages that appeared to broaden the recipient's social network, by connecting him or her to others with similar interests or situations, including access, presence, and companions”(Braithwaite, 135). Emotional support includes relationship, physical affection, confidntiality, sympathy, empathy and prayer. In addition to 5 factors mentioned in Brainwaite, we included humor.
Results::
While there were average of 1.2 social support messages per turn in the research led by Brainwaite, we found 2.35 types per turn. The addition of humor could have affected the change, because we found humor in the majority of responses.
Rui Jian (rj79): Brown
For our blog assignment, Rui and I read entries done in two usenet social networks: Both groups came up as results of keywords "relationship, advice." The first thread involved a female asking advices on how to get her boyfriend to settle with only her. In two threads, a shy male sought tips on interpreting female behaviors and values. We analyzed 20 responses in total.
According to Brainwaite et al, online social groups show 5 major types of support: information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support and emotional support. Informational support, “includes messages that conveyed instructions, including advice, referrals to experts, situation appraisal, and teaching. Messages coded as information support appeared to reduce uncertainty or help make life more predictable for the message recipient.” (Braithwaite, 133)
Tangible assistance includes concrete, physical actions the sender offers to take, in support of the recipient (such as performing a direct task, performing an indirect task, loaning, active participation and expressing willingness). Esteem support concentrates on validating sense of self-worth. Network support “involves messages that appeared to broaden the recipient's social network, by connecting him or her to others with similar interests or situations, including access, presence, and companions”(Braithwaite, 135). Emotional support includes relationship, physical affection, confidntiality, sympathy, empathy and prayer. In addition to 5 factors mentioned in Brainwaite, we included humor.
Results::
While there were average of 1.2 social support messages per turn in the research led by Brainwaite, we found 2.35 types per turn. The addition of humor could have affected the change, because we found humor in the majority of responses.
Our results without humor as a factor::
The major differences between our result and Braithwaite’s are informational support (58% vs 31%), emotional support (15% vs 40%), and tangible assistance (0% vs 3%)
The discrepancy is probably due to the fact that the data of our analysis are gathered from relationship and shyness support groups while Braithwaite gathered data from disability support group. People need more information (advice, experience, analysis of situation, etc) to overcome shyness and relationship problem. Since many people with disability are depressed, they need much more emotional support cheer them up. Also, people with disabilities need more physical actions to help them (tangible assistance).
Rui and I showed an over 88% inter-rater reliability which implies a high accuracy in coding. A small disagreement in coding occurred, because we had different opinions on inferred esteem support and emotional support. It was challenging to pick up the tone of bloggers' voices because most messages were brief and lacked social cues usually available in FtF settings.
Our result demonstrates how CMC can help foster support among individuals who normally would not enroll for giving or receiving help. In chapter 10, Wallace argues that because of high number of anonymous traffic, online space will not foster supportive environment. However, entries from GetOverHim and alt.support.shyness suggest otherwise. Wallace fails to address how usenet initiates relationships among empathetic users with similar interests. Although there are numerous users, individuals of specific interests seek groups with related goals. For example, messages posted in alt.support.shy group imply how members themselves often struggled with self-image and shyness in social situations.
The four factors identified by Walther and Boyd identified also help explain why people contribute online. Anonymity reduces social anxieties and provide senses of safety for shy individuals, so they can talk about personal matters and seek help more freely.“….How can you tell a girl is interested?” (alt.support.shyness) For GetOverHim, an aggressive female can reach out without worrying aboutsocial stigma. Another factor social distance refers to the distance between people in different social groups. In CMC, social distance barrier is somewhat fluid. Thus a wide range of people with diverse knowledge online. CMC provides users with sense of control, because the interactions arehighly manageable, letting users to compose and read at their own convenience. Around the clock availability of support also attracts users. Somewhere in the world somebody is awake when you are, no matter what time it is.
http://groups.google.com/group/GetOverHim/browse_thread/thread/99910fc8cac8f3ea
8 Anxiety Analyses
This study was conducted in conjunction with Lindsay Bass of the yellow blog.
Our group decided to analyze the messages of an anxiety and panic disorder support group on Google Groups. (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.anxiety-panic/topics) We coded each of the twenty messages into the excel spreadsheet, and determined which category of support it fell into.
Braithwaite distinguished six different types of support commonly found on social support websites.
The first category, informational support, is made up of advice, referrals to experts, situational appraisal, and teaching.
The second category, tangible assistance, is made up of loans, performance of a directed and indirect task, active participation, and expressing willingness.
The third category, esteem support, includes compliments, validation, and relief of blame. The fourth category, network support, is made up of access and presence of companions.
The fifth category, emotional support, is made up of, physical affection, confidentiality, sympathy, understanding, empathy, encouragement, and prayer.
The final category, humor, simply refers to the presence of humor in the message.
After completing the spreadsheet, we compared our results to Braithwaite’s study. We found a far higher incidence of informational messages at 75% than Braithwaite did at 31.3%. We had literally no tangible assistance or network support messages in any of the support messages we analyzed. We also found an esteem support of 45%, far greater than that of Braithwaite’s content analyses at 18.6%. This is due to the nature of the support group we chose. As anxiety disorders are mental conditions, it is very difficult to offer tangible assistance to other sufferers. However, esteem support is especially meaningful to these individuals, who are seeking validation from one another online. This explains our increased incidence of esteem support messages relative to Braithwaite’s analyses.
Analyzing the social support messages about anxiety affirmed Walther’s theory about online social support. Walther argued that because of social distance and anonymity, more people would respond and provide support. These factors were especially relevant since the threads we studied contained posts from socially anxious individuals. They may not have had the courage to ask for support face to face, but online they can carefully construct messages and avoid social scrutiny because of removal of gating features. Anonymity especially worked to their advantage. Since the online network is much larger than the network of each individual’s surrounding company, social distance provided greater access to information and a wider variety of opinions. By hearing people’s experiences with anxiety all over the
Our percent inter-rater reliability was .89. This is over the benchmark value of 70%, and represents a significant level of reliability.
| % inter-rater reliability | 0.8916667 | | ||
| | | | frequency | % of msgs |
| Information | | 15 | 0.75 | |
| Tangible assistance | 0 | 0 | ||
| Esteem support | | 9 | 0.45 | |
| Network support | | 0 | 0 | |
| Emotional support | 6 | 0.3 | ||
| Humor | | | 5 | 0.25 |
My Partner and I Finish Each Other’s…Sandwiches
post also by: Mathew Birnbaum (Green)
There is nothing better than an afternoon filled with reading other people’s depressing problems and Google Groups has the best, most depressing stories out there! My fellow coder and I stumbled across a group called alt.support.marriage where we heard the heartfelt story from Bob Thompson, a 31 yr old male. (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.marriage/browse_thread/thread/63d9fa48b00895e4/5765eede5e903c3f?lnk=st&q=midlife+crisis#
Bob has been married to his current wife for four years and has two children. His message and “cry for help” pertained to his recent failing marriage which subsequently coincided with increased financial stress and complications concerning his second child’s birth.
After analyzing 20 messages within this marriage support group—using the coding and model of Braithwaite’s study—my partner and I discovered the following results:
% inter-rater reliability:0.8666667
frequency % of msgs
Information 19 0.95
Tangible assistance 1 0.05
Esteem support 13 0.65
Network support 3 0.15
Emotional support 11 0.55
Humor 5 0.25
We accumulated an inter-rater reliability of 86.7%, a score slightly higher than reliability score found in the Braithwaite study—80%. This small difference may be due to the fact that unlike the original study, the several elements of social support (information, tangible assistance, etc.) were not further dissected into smaller subcategories(i.e. advice, referral, situation appraisal, etc.). Additionally, our examination of social support found a much higher percentage of information support, 95%, when compared to Braithwaite’s finding of 31.3%. This is in agreement with Cutrona and Suhr’s optimal matching model (OMM), which states situations deemed more in the control of the individual, will warrant more information social support. Bob’s failing marriage can be viewed as more in his control opposed to the disability situations which Braithwaite dealt with. Even Bob’s message title outright called for help and information—the actual title cannot be reproduced here due to its somewhat crude language. However, unlike OMM, there was still a relatively high percentage of Emotional support, 55%, similar to the findings in the original study, 40%. Despite conflicting with OMM, this finding does make intuitive sense because some group members responded to Bob saying it was “not his fault” and out of his control. These responses focused on how Bob’s depressed wife caused the stress on their marriage and that Bob is just feeling the circumstantial wrath. We also found results similar to Braithwaite concerning tangible assistance and network support. Specifically for network support, our findings agreed with the study’s notion that simply being an active member of these support groups provided a good amount of network support in itself. “Members met their needs for network support simply by participating in Support Network. Therefore, members did not need to make network support the object of their message” (Braithwaite, pg. 143).
Walther and Boyd’s four dimensions of attraction to online support also are evident in the case of Bob and his long list of concerned support group members. The social distance dimension allowed Bob to have access to a much larger pool of resources and individuals. This lager scope potentially contained individuals with greater expertise and knowledge in the subject of failing marriages compared to Bob’s immediate group of friends and family. However, this element of social distance, in both our and the Braithwaite study, may have partially caused the low rates of tangible assistance. It is difficult to promise and initiate tangible support with the social distance present in CMC support groups. Additionally, the notion of access was very prominent in the support group. The times of when the posts were made are recorded which showed messages and responses spanning the wee hours of the night and morning. It can be very comforting to receive a consoling message from CJ at 3 in the morning rather that having to wait to the next morning when it is considered a more appropriate time. The concept of anonymity online was also an important factor in that it allowed Bob to be very honest and open about his situation and in turn allowed people to respond with honest opinions and advice. Anonymity is a dimension of attraction to online support groups because it removed pressure for individuals to censor their comments. For example, there may not have been as much humor in people’s responses if they had been identifiable to others in the support network. The fourth dimension, interaction management, was an apparent attraction to online support because there was no pressure to respond immediately. Users have the ability to read through already posted messages, and comment whenever they choose to do so. Although this may interrupt the flow of messages, it gives people more time to put more thought into their responses.
There is nothing better than an afternoon filled with reading other people’s depressing problems and Google Groups has the best, most depressing stories out there! My fellow coder and I stumbled across a group called alt.support.marriage where we heard the heartfelt story from Bob Thompson, a 31 yr old male. (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.marriage/browse_thread/thread/63d9fa48b00895e4/5765eede5e903c3f?lnk=st&q=midlife+crisis#
Bob has been married to his current wife for four years and has two children. His message and “cry for help” pertained to his recent failing marriage which subsequently coincided with increased financial stress and complications concerning his second child’s birth.
After analyzing 20 messages within this marriage support group—using the coding and model of Braithwaite’s study—my partner and I discovered the following results:
% inter-rater reliability:0.8666667
frequency % of msgs
Information 19 0.95
Tangible assistance 1 0.05
Esteem support 13 0.65
Network support 3 0.15
Emotional support 11 0.55
Humor 5 0.25
We accumulated an inter-rater reliability of 86.7%, a score slightly higher than reliability score found in the Braithwaite study—80%. This small difference may be due to the fact that unlike the original study, the several elements of social support (information, tangible assistance, etc.) were not further dissected into smaller subcategories(i.e. advice, referral, situation appraisal, etc.). Additionally, our examination of social support found a much higher percentage of information support, 95%, when compared to Braithwaite’s finding of 31.3%. This is in agreement with Cutrona and Suhr’s optimal matching model (OMM), which states situations deemed more in the control of the individual, will warrant more information social support. Bob’s failing marriage can be viewed as more in his control opposed to the disability situations which Braithwaite dealt with. Even Bob’s message title outright called for help and information—the actual title cannot be reproduced here due to its somewhat crude language. However, unlike OMM, there was still a relatively high percentage of Emotional support, 55%, similar to the findings in the original study, 40%. Despite conflicting with OMM, this finding does make intuitive sense because some group members responded to Bob saying it was “not his fault” and out of his control. These responses focused on how Bob’s depressed wife caused the stress on their marriage and that Bob is just feeling the circumstantial wrath. We also found results similar to Braithwaite concerning tangible assistance and network support. Specifically for network support, our findings agreed with the study’s notion that simply being an active member of these support groups provided a good amount of network support in itself. “Members met their needs for network support simply by participating in Support Network. Therefore, members did not need to make network support the object of their message” (Braithwaite, pg. 143).
Walther and Boyd’s four dimensions of attraction to online support also are evident in the case of Bob and his long list of concerned support group members. The social distance dimension allowed Bob to have access to a much larger pool of resources and individuals. This lager scope potentially contained individuals with greater expertise and knowledge in the subject of failing marriages compared to Bob’s immediate group of friends and family. However, this element of social distance, in both our and the Braithwaite study, may have partially caused the low rates of tangible assistance. It is difficult to promise and initiate tangible support with the social distance present in CMC support groups. Additionally, the notion of access was very prominent in the support group. The times of when the posts were made are recorded which showed messages and responses spanning the wee hours of the night and morning. It can be very comforting to receive a consoling message from CJ at 3 in the morning rather that having to wait to the next morning when it is considered a more appropriate time. The concept of anonymity online was also an important factor in that it allowed Bob to be very honest and open about his situation and in turn allowed people to respond with honest opinions and advice. Anonymity is a dimension of attraction to online support groups because it removed pressure for individuals to censor their comments. For example, there may not have been as much humor in people’s responses if they had been identifiable to others in the support network. The fourth dimension, interaction management, was an apparent attraction to online support because there was no pressure to respond immediately. Users have the ability to read through already posted messages, and comment whenever they choose to do so. Although this may interrupt the flow of messages, it gives people more time to put more thought into their responses.
Assignment 8: Walther and Boyd not perfect
Entry by: Ariel Tassy and Peter Thompson
Table and example links at the bottomAfter coding our 20 different Support Network messages, we entered our data into the spreadsheet and looked at the frequency and percent of messages for each category. The category that appeared the most was information. Many of the messages we read had some sort of advice or facts that the writer was trying to get across to the original person who posted the message seeking help. This was the most common type of post. Next was esteem support, but only having about half of the percentage that information had. Many of the posts also included people trying to validate the person seeking help’s feelings and reactions. Comments like these were often used, “Your right to feel that way, I understand where your coming from”. The next most used category was network support. After that was humor. It was interesting to see how much humor was actually used to make the person seeking help feel better. Many of the messages that did contain humor used sarcasm. Last was tangible support with zero messages. Our inter-rater reliability had a value of 0.73.
Our findings differed somewhat from what Braithwaite found. In the Braithwaite article the category that came up the most often was emotional support. After that was information support, esteem support, network support, and then tangible assistance. We found much less emotional support than did Braithwaite. However like Braithwaite, we did find the network and tangible support being used less frequently then the others. Another interesting part of the Braithwaite article was the Humor section. Similarly to us, Braithwaite found that many messages included sarcastic humor. He also says that the messages that did include humor were sometimes confused and hard to interpret. This is something we definitely discovered while coding the messages. Messages that included some type of ironic or sarcastic humor were the hardest to code and interpret. Maybe the fact that we stumbled upon quite a few humorous messages affected our results because we confused the message and could not correctly code it. Another reason why our results could be different is because although the guidelines for each category is laid out in the article, it was often difficult to sometimes decide exactly what type of support was occurring, and this not only caused a lower inter-reliability but also could be why our results somewhat different from Braithwaite’s’.
When comparing our results with other theories and points brought up in class it is very interesting to see where our findings came into conflict with the results. What we found neither confirmed or negated the four dimensions of attraction to online social support that are brought up by Walther & Boyd (2003). It was actually very interesting to see that none of the dimensions held up on a consistent basis, some even countered others just by the nature of them.
The first dimension, social distance, is that people appreciate the distance of the internet that allows a greater audience and in turn a greater expertise. This was clear in most of the interactions. However, in one talking about ADHD/OCD/TS in their kids, two women were complaining that the large scope was making it hard to find people who know about the
The next dimension of anonymity was the most consistent. People generally would not post information relating to their true, not online, identity or contact information. Occasionally an email would be put up, or a potentially real sounding name, but there were no guarantees that those posts were those people.
Interaction management is the ability that users appreciate, to carefully construct and craft their messages. Some people would clearly have well written explanations, but because of anonymity, some people would clearly not think through their responses, we will cite numerous typos in the shortest, most aggressive or emotional responses as evidence.
The last dimension called access was clearly the one solid piece that people stood by. There would be entries from all times of day, even responses to comments from months prior.
One more idea we will relate to is what Wallace brought up in her book. The idea is that people in “real life” are less likely to help someone in need when there are more people around. There is a diffusion of responsibility. Online however, it appears that the decreased “noticeability” and lack of non-verbal cues from other people make someone more willing to help out another in need. This was clear just be the threads we found always had a bunch of responses with many opinions showing that people did make an effort to help, even if they didn’t do much or made it worse.
Table:
| | % inter-rater reliability | 0.733333 |
| | Frequency | % of messages |
| Information | 16 | 0.8 |
| Tangible assistance | 0 | 0 |
| Esteem support | 9 | 0.45 |
| Network support | 1 | 0.05 |
| Emotional support | 6 | 0.3 |
| Humor | 2 | 0.1 |
the first 10 responses in this link
the responses from spartacus and agaw.buhay and omprakash1 in this link
The sparticus response in this link
The XcitableOne and nKnisley responses in this link
The morph grrl response in this link
The Sue H, Jane Pall and ATeased 5941 response in this link
Assignment #8: Divorce Support
*Note: This study was also done by Emily Meath (Green) and Carlos Molina (Red).
In this study, we examined the different kinds of support people offer in divorce support groups on Google groups. We chose this subject because the very nature of such groups is to offer support, so we believed that the kinds of support for divorce would represent well the kinds of support people give online in general.
We examined 20 messages in total, deciding whether or not each message contained the following kinds of support: Information, Tangible assistance, Esteem support, Network support, Emotional support, and Humor. Each message was examined and evaluated by each coder (total of three), and then the sum of all three coders' evaluations were tallied. Here are the results:
In this study, we examined the different kinds of support people offer in divorce support groups on Google groups. We chose this subject because the very nature of such groups is to offer support, so we believed that the kinds of support for divorce would represent well the kinds of support people give online in general.
We examined 20 messages in total, deciding whether or not each message contained the following kinds of support: Information, Tangible assistance, Esteem support, Network support, Emotional support, and Humor. Each message was examined and evaluated by each coder (total of three), and then the sum of all three coders' evaluations were tallied. Here are the results:
As can be seen, the inter-rater reliability is exceedingly high at 96.7%, considering only 70% is required for a reliable evaluation. Comparing our results with the results from Braithwaite et. al. gives some interesting similarities and discrepancies. Our results for information, tangibile assistance, and emotional support were all very similar. However, we had a much higher percentage of messages pertaining to both esteem support and network support. However, these differences can easily be explained. Two of the three threads we examined had topics that specifically asked where to find divorce support groups, so many people offered support in the form of network assistance. In terms of esteem support, one of the three original posters for the three threads we examined seemed to have very little self esteem, so most of the posts included assistance in the form of reassurance and reinforcement. One of the other posters felt as though all the support groups catered to childless divorced couples, and some of the posts tried to assure her that she was not "crazy" for feeling this way. Although the Braithwaite study did not give a numerical value for humor, they did mention that it was an "unusually important form of support," which is consistent with our results.
In chapter 10 of her book, Wallace discusses what she calls the “numbers” factor of social support, in which she states that in a larger social community where there are increased numbers, the “noticeability” of each individual seeking support is decreased due to the diffusion of responsibility view, which basically assumes that in a group of people if we see someone that needs help, we will be less likely to give assistance ourselves the larger the group, because it is easier to assume that someone else will take on that responsibility. However, the results we found in our study were not consistent with Wallace’s “numbers” theory, which can be explained the fact that while there are many people online, they are, for practical purposes, invisible to each other, thus effectively reducing the number of individuals in the social community.
On the other hand, our findings were more consistent with Walther & Boyd’s 2003 study, in which they note the four dimensions of attraction to online social support to be social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. Indeed, the online environment does allow for a greater span of information from people with varied expertise due to the social distance of the online community; there is also the option of anonymity which was prevalent on the group forum in which various screenames were chosen which gave no information about the individual’s actual identity; in the asynchronous forum setting, users are definitely able to craft their messages more carefully and post and respond whenever is most convenient for them; and finally access to these forums is guaranteed 24/7, which is not always available in FtF support.
However, while Wallace hypothesizes that due to the numbers factor, social support would not be as effective online, the type of social support she compares this to is the FtF support which is inherently a type of tangible assistance, which we interestingly found not trace of in our online study. So while Wallace may be right in the fact that one would be less likely to receive tangible assistance online, specifically, she would be right, but that in line with Walther & Boyd’s findings, it seems that the online community provides the space for various types of assistance that may not be as easy to provide in FtF support without providing tangible assistance, so that online people can choose to provide assistance to others on their own terms, and that the online environment is more flexible for providing social support in that respect, which may account for the fact that social support does seem to be quite prevalent online.
Messages 1-11
*Note: we did not evaluate messages 5, 6, 7, or 12
Messages 12 - 19
Message 20
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