Supportive Communication, Sense of Virtual Community and Health Outcomes in Online Infertility Groups

Women are turning to online health groups to deal with the stresses and complications of infertility. Online groups may provide a resource that is potentially absent in their face-to-face communities. This study examines how the sense of virtual community (SOVC) that develops in these groups serves as a buffer between perceived stress and physical health symptoms. A sample of 122 women from two virtual communities completed an online survey. Results show that observing the exchange of emotional support was positively related to SOVC while observing informational support was negatively related to SOVC. Further, SOVC was negatively related to physical health symptoms and additionally, served as a buffer between stress and physical health symptoms. Implications for SOVC and virtual health community research are discussed

Brand Engagement in Virtual Communities – A Netnographic Study

Social media groups help foster discussions, but it can be challenging for brands to maintain user engagement and collaborate in value co-creation. Despite a pressing need to comprehend the dynamics of virtual communities, there is a lack of a concerted view of how users engage with brands in virtual communities. To explore this, we use a sport-based virtual community as context since fan engagement levels are substantially higher in sports communities than in other virtual communities. Leveraging the sense of community theory and netnography as a method, we study community formation in a Facebook group comprising fans of a European football club. Preliminary findings reveal a strong presence of membership, influence, and shared emotional connection, while integration and fulfillment of needs are relatively less dominant. As next steps, we plan to examine how a sense of community evolves in virtual communities through a longitudinal approach. Potential implications are discussed

Exploring sense of community within an online healthcare context

This paper argues that organisations considering corporate community involvement within online communities need to understanding how the notion of sense of community (SOC) is manifested and experienced within such stakeholder groups. This is based on the assumption that CCI is a form of corporate social responsibility that goes beyond the mere funding of charitable activities but involves a deeper involvement and participation within the life of the community (Moon and Muthuri 2006). Hence, it is expected that the corporation not only allocates significant amount of time and resources to such involvement (Yekini et al. 2017), but also implies a more in-depth understanding of the community itself. Therefore, this paper argues that in order for CSR managers to better identify and engage with relevant online communities, they need to be able to understand and apply the notion SOC within an online context. The case of an online healthcare community, hosted by a charitable institution in the UK, is presented to illustrate and support this argument

The real-world implications of an imaginary world: A netnography of a Harry Potter based virtual community (Hogwarts Running Club)

The rapid development, growth, and diffusion of technology throughout the world today has spurred an integration with socializing and engagement that is fast becoming a part of everyday life (Baym, 2015; Blank, 2012; Consalvo & Ess, 2011). One such manifestation of this new form of social interaction is communities formed online or virtual communities (Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2002). Virtual communities have been in existence for over thirty years (Ridings, Gefen, and Arinze, 2002) and existing studies of these communities have yielded powerful insights into learning, communication, marketing, relationships, benefits of participation, and more (Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Mamonov, Koufaris, & Benbunan-Fich, 2016; Nimrod, 2014; Welbourne, Blanchard, & Boughton, 2009; Wellman & Gulia, 1999; Winkelman & Choo, 2003). However, there are still aspects of virtual communities about which little is known. Therefore, this study utilized the qualitative research technique of Netnography (Kozinets, 2010; 2015) to explore the experiences of participation in a virtual community and the meanings participants associate with membership in this group. Specific research questions focused on motivations, potential benefits, and potential implications for participants’ offline reality. The Hogwarts Running Club (HRC), a virtual community established in 2014 (HRC, 2017), on Facebook was the study setting. This Facebook group had approximately 16,000 members who engaged in online discussions and activities that focused around the Harry Potter book series and running (HRC, 2018a). The posts within the virtual community Great Hall (named for a location that is significant in the Harry Potter book series) served as the source of study data. As the researcher was a member of the HRC, four qualitative techniques were utilized to alleviate concerns surrounding “backyard” research (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). These four techniques were member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), prolonged engagement in the study setting (Creswell & Miller, 2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), peer debriefing (Creswell, 2009; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), and reflexive journaling (Genoe & Liechty, 2016; Walsh, 2003). Findings of the study have been presented as three manuscripts with unique foci. Sense of Community (McMillan & Chavis, 1986), Serious Leisure (Stebbins, 2007; 2012), and benefits and motivations each serve as the focus of a manuscript where implications for research and application have been discussed

Blogging about Family Building (Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, Adoption, Pregnancy, Trying to Conceive): Content and Blogging Motivations

To better understand the content and process of family building blogging, two interrelated studies took place. First, blogs with posts during a designated week were analyzed for content. Then, hosts of active blogs were invited to complete a survey on their blog content and reasons for blogging. Results of both content analysis and survey indicated a variety of content appearing in such blogs, with children, pregnancy, attempts to conceive, and negative emotional experiences related to those emerging as popular topics. To identify motivations for blogging about such content, a principal components analysis (PCA) suggested seven different blogging motivations: gaining attention, benefitting others, becoming a career blogger, entertaining others, documenting life events, self-expression, and forming an online social support network. To further explore blogging motivations, subgroups of bloggers (those having experienced infertility, those having experienced pregnancy loss, and those already parenting) were compared on their ratings of the seven blogging motivations with multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). While results mostly supported consistency across subgroups in motivations, there was a significant effect for infertility experience on ratings for educating others and self-expression. This investigation represents the first known attempt to capture what information is included in the growing subgenre of family building blogs and what reasons inspire bloggers to create and maintain them

Rationalizing Ignorance and the No New Normal Community: Mythology, Sense of Community, and Conspiracy Theories

This study researched the themes of Campbell’s (1988) third (sociological) and fourth (pedagogical) functions of mythology and sense of community theory on the anti-mask subreddit: No New Normal. Users of the No New Normal subreddit, posited that they lived in a different reality from those that chose to wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines during the 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic. A digital ethnography, over an eleven-month period, analyzed and catalogued 838 user comments and posts revealing that mythological functions underpinned their arguments and strengthened a belief that they were quickly approaching a dystopian future with those that chose to wear a mask as the enemy. Furthermore, posts from the group revealed a community, as defined by the sense of community, that was especially pronounced as elements of membership

Proc ACM Hum Comput Interact

Participation in communities is essential to individual mental and physical health and can yield further benefits for members. With a growing amount of time spent participating in virtual communities, it's increasingly important that we understand how the community experience manifests in and varies across these online spaces. In this paper, we investigate Sense of Virtual Community (SOVC) in the context of live-streaming communities. Through a survey of 1,944 Twitch viewers, we identify that community experiences on Twitch vary along two primary dimensions: |, a feeling of membership and support within the group, and |, a feeling that the group is a well-run collective with standards for behavior. Leveraging the Social-Ecological Model, we map behavioral trace data from usage logs to various levels of the social ecology surrounding an individual user's participation within a community, in order to identify which of these can be associated with lower or higher SOVC. We find that features describing activity at the individual and community levels, but not features describing the community member's dyadic relationships, aid in predicting the SOVC that community members feel within channels. We consider implications for the design of live-streaming communities and for fostering the well-being of their members, and we consider theoretical implications for the study of SOVC in modern, interactive online contexts, particularly those fostering large-scale or pseudonymized interactions. We also explore how the Social-Ecological Model can be leveraged in other contexts relevant to Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), with implications for future work.CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States