Unpacking Support Types in Online Health Communities: An Application of Attraction-Selection-Attrition Theory

Online communities are increasingly becoming part of the healthcare ecosystem, as they allow patients, family members and carers to connect and support each other at any time and from any location. This support can take many forms, including information, advice, esteem support and solidarity. Prior research has identified the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Theory as a promising framework for modelling and explaining how participants join, participate, and leave organizations in general (and online communities specifically), and how the actions of individuals effect the organization as a whole. However, it has not previously been applied specifically to online health communities (i.e. those that focus on physical and/or mental health). We propose to gather empirical evidence from a large online community that provides support for Australians effected by cancer. In doing so, we hope to develop evidence-based policies and procedures for growing, maintaining and moderating these communities

Exploring the dark side of online social networks: A taxonomy of negative effects on users

© 26th European Conference on Information Systems: Beyond Digitization - Facets of Socio-Technical Change, ECIS 2018. All Rights Reserved. The use of online social networks (OSNs) has grown substantially over the past few years and many studies have reported the benefits and positive effects of using these platforms. However, the negative effects of OSNs have received little attention. Given the lack of a comprehensive picture of the dark side of using OSNs, we conducted a systematic literature review of the top information systems journals to categorise negative effects and develop a taxonomy of the dark side of OSNs use. Our review of 20 papers identified 43 negative effects of OSNs use, which we grouped into six categories: cost of social exchange, annoying content, privacy concerns, security threats, cyber bullying and low performance that formed the holistic view of dark side of OSNs use. This paper discusses implications of the findings, identifies gaps in the literature and provides a roadmap for future research

A Review of Opportunities and Challenges of Carers’ Support on Online Social Platforms

The purpose of this study is to investigate opportunities and challenges of carers’ support on online social platforms. We conducted a systematic literature review of 20 journal articles, and explored positive and negative aspects of online social platforms in three main categories: (i) Carer Wellbeing, (ii) Care Service, and (iii) Common Opportunities or Challenges. A Demographic analysis of publication year, country, user type, and research method have been discussed. The study uncovered that online platforms have a proportional amount of positive and negative impacts. We found that (i) the challenges guide us on how to educate carers and plan for uncertainties, and (ii) the opportunities shed a ray of hope on ways to assist the carers using online social networks. Results guide future research in mitigating challenges and strengthening opportunities for supporting and empowering carers on online social platforms

A Conceptual Framework of Digital Empowerment of Informal Carers: An Expert Elicitation Study

Many studies on online health communities (OHCs) have focused on patients’ well-being. The capabilities of OHCs to effect other psychosocial states like empowerment have been under-explored. Additionally, the study of empowerment of other healthcare stakeholders, specifically informal carers, has not attracted much study. This is despite evidence that carers use OHCs as an information and self-care resource in dealing with the stress and strain of caregiving. It is not clear how moderator support may influence carer empowerment. We propose a conceptual model to explore how moderated OHCs may influence empowerment of carers. In order to assess the model and support its robustness, this paper uses expert interviews of academics and industry professionals, with the view to focusing the research as well as operationalise the model. Results suggest a favourable acceptance of the model by experts, and thematic analysis of their conversations generated an additional construct

Impacts of the use of social network sites on users' psychological well-being: A systematic review

© 2018 ASIS & T As Social Network Sites (SNSs) are increasingly becoming part of people's everyday lives, the implications of their use need to be investigated and understood. We conducted a systematic literature review to lay the groundwork for understanding the relationship between SNS use and users' psychological well-being and for devising strategies for taking advantage of this relationship. The review included articles published between 2003 and 2016, extracted from major academic databases. Findings revealed that the use of SNSs is both positively and negatively related to users' psychological well-being. We discuss the factors that moderate this relationship and their implications on users' psychological well-being. Many of the studies we reviewed lacked a sound theoretical justification for their findings and most involved young and healthy students, leaving other cohorts of SNS users neglected. The paper concludes with the presentation of a platform for future investigation

Information and communication technologies and patient empowerment: A complex skein

This article aims to explore the relationship between patient empowerment and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Indeed, ICTs are considered important for increasing access to medical information and for patients\u2019 other experiences, thereby nourishing the empowering rhetoric. The paper presents a research study conducted in Italy that focuses on the self-assessments made by online health communities (OHCs) users, subdivided in three categories, according to their level of online activity: Lurkers, occasionally active users and frequently active users. The concept of empowerment was operationalised in five issues: autonomy from doctors, involvement in medical decision-making, competence, self-management and acceptance. The results support the relationship between perceptions of empowerment and the higher level of activity played on OHCs, contributing instead to reject the idea of a generalised benefit. Moreover, the paper aims to enrich the theory of patient empowerment by adding a socio-material perspective. This helps broaden the understanding of the relationship between empowerment and ICTs by highlighting its underlying complex skein

Social Network Sites Use and Psychological distress: A Systematic Review

Social Network Sites (SNSs) have become a pervasive part of people’s everyday lives, the implications of their use need to be investigated and understood. We conducted a systematic literature review to lay the groundwork for understanding the relationship between SNS use and psychological distress. The review included articles published between 2003 and 2020, extracted from major academic databases. Findings revealed that the use of SNSs use can be associated to psychological distress. This study shows the factors such as depressive rumination, narcissistic behavior, excessive and unsupervised SNS use that mediate this relationship

Institutional vs. Non-institutional use of Social Media during Emergency Response: A Case of Twitter in 2014 Australian Bush Fire

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. Social media plays a significant role in rapid propagation of information when disasters occur. Among the four phases of disaster management life cycle: prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery, this paper focuses on the use of social media during the response phase. It empirically examines the use of microblogging platforms by Emergency Response Organisations (EROs) during extreme natural events, and distinguishes the use of Twitter by EROs from digital volunteers during a fire hazard occurred in Australia state of Victoria in early February 2014. We analysed 7982 tweets on this event. While traditionally theories such as World System Theory and Institutional Theory focus on the role of powerful institutional information outlets, we found that platforms like Twitter challenge such notion by sharing the power between large institutional (e.g. EROs) and smaller non-institutional players (e.g. digital volunteers) in the dissemination of disaster information. Our results highlight that both large EROs and individual digital volunteers proactively used Twitter to disseminate and distribute fire related information. We also found that the contents of tweets were more informative than directive, and that while the total number of messages posted by top EROs was higher than the non-institutional ones, non-institutions presented a greater number of retweets

Consequences of information exchanges of vulnerable women on Facebook: An information grounds study informing value co-creation and ICT4D research

Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research sporadically leverages information science scholarship. Our qualitative study employs the “information grounds” (IG) lens to investigate the consequences of information exchanges by pregnant women on Facebook, who are vulnerable in the doctor-centric birth culture in rural America. The thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with members and administrators of the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) group shows that positive consequences outweigh negative consequences of information exchanges and lead to the following progression of outcomes: (1) VBAC group as an information ground, (2) social capital (e.g., cognitive, structural, and relational capital) built on the information ground, (3) seven emergent properties of the information ground, and (4) value co-created (e.g., local, affordable, timely, enduring, and reliable support) by VBAC group members. The IG lens reveals the following roles of Facebook, an ICT, in development: (a) a linker that lets people with similar needs and interests convene and shapes their interactions, (b) a pre-requisite to building an online, “third place” for social interactions, and (c) an apparatus for ubiquitously seeking, searching, sharing, and storing information in multiple formats and controlling its flow on the VBAC group. This paper fills in six gaps in the ICT4D research