The social nature of serial murder: The intersection of gender and modernity

The literature on the aetiology of serial killing has benefited from analyses which offer an alternative perspective to individual/psychological approaches and consider serial murder as a sociological phenomenon. The main argument brought to bear within this body of work identifies the socio-economic and cultural conditions of modernity as enabling and legitimating the motivations and actions of the serial killer. This article interrogates this work from the standpoint of a gendered reading of modernity. Using the Yorkshire Ripper case, it emphasizes how in addition to the political economy, gender relations and masculinity shape the dynamics of serial murder and its representation

Analyzing empowerment processes among cancer patients in an online community: A text mining approach

Background: Peer-to-peer online support groups and the discussion forums in these groups can help patients by providing opportunities for increasing their empowerment. Most previous research on online empowerment and online social support uses qualitative methods or questionnaires to gain insight into the dynamics of online empowerment processes. Objective: The overall goal of this study was to analyze the presence of the empowerment processes in the online peer-to-peer communication of people affected by cancer, using text mining techniques. Use of these relatively new methods enables us to study social processes such as empowerment on a large scale and with unsolicited data. Methods: The sample consisted of 5534 messages in 1708 threads, written by 2071 users of a forum for cancer patients and their relatives. We labeled the posts in our sample with 2 types of labels: labels referring to empowerment processes and labels denoting psychological processes. The latter were identified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) method. Both groups of labels were automatically assigned to posts. Automatic labeling of the empowerment processes was done by text classifiers trained on a manually labeled subsample. For the automatic labeling of the LIWC categories, we used the Dutch version of the LIWC consisting of a total of 66 word categories that are assigned to text based on occurrences of words in the text. After the automatic labeling with both types of labels, we investigated (1) the relationship between empowerment processes and the intensity of online participation, (2) the relationship between empowerment processes and the LIWC categories, and (3) the differences between patients with different types of cancer. Results: The precision of the automatic labeling was 85.6%, which we considered to be sufficient for automatically labeling the complete corpus and doing further analyses on the labeled data. Overall, 62.94% (3482/5532) of the messages contained a narrative, 23.83% (1318/5532) a question, and 27.49% (1521/5532) informational support. Emotional support and references to external sources were less frequent. Users with more posts more often referred to an external source and more often provided informational support and emotional support (Kendall τ>0.2; P<.001) and less often shared narratives (Kendall τ=−0.297; P<.001). A number of LIWC categories are significant predictors for the empowerment processes: words expressing assent (ok and yes) and emotional processes (expressions of feelings) are significant positive predictors for emotional support (P=.002). The differences between patients with different types of cancer are small. Conclusions: Empowerment processes are associated with the intensity of online use. The relationship between linguistic analyses and empowerment processes indicates that empowerment processes can be identified from the occurrences of specific linguistic cues denoting psychological processes

Analyzing Empowerment Processes Among Cancer Patients in an Online Community: A Text Mining Approach

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Patients’ convergence of mass and interpersonal communication on an online forum: Hybrid methods analysis

Background: Patients are increasingly taking an active role in their health. In doing so, they combine both mass and interpersonal media to gratify their cognitive and affective needs (ie, convergence). Owing to methodological challenges when studying convergence, a detailed view of how patients are using different types of media for needs fulfillment is lacking. Objective: The aim of this study was to obtain insight into the frequency of reported convergence, how convergence affects what posters write online, motives for posting, and the needs posters are trying to fulfill. Methods: Using a hybrid method of content analysis and supervised machine learning, this study used naturally available data to fill this research gap. We analyzed opening posts (N=1708) of an online forum targeting cancer patients and their relatives (Kanker.nl). Results: Nearly one-third of the forum opening posts contained signs of convergence in mass or interpersonal media. Posts containing mass media references disclosed less personal information and were more geared toward community enhancement and sharing experiences compared to posts without convergence. Furthermore, compared to posts without signs of convergence, posts that included interpersonal media references disclosed more personal information, and posters were more likely to ask for the experiences of fellow users to fulfill their needs. Within posts containing signs of convergence, posts including interpersonal media references reported fewer shortages of information, disclosed more information about the disease, and were more active in seeking other posters’ experiences compared to posts containing mass media references. Conclusions: The current study highlights the intertwining of media platforms for patients. The insights of this study can be used to adapt the health care system toward a new type of health information–seeking behavior in which one medium is not trusted to fulfill all needs. Instead, providers should incorporate the intertwinement of sources by providing patients with reliable websites and forums through which they can fulfill their needs