Conference proceeding
The Evolution and Diffusion of User Roles in Online Health Communities - A Social Support Perspective
2015 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS (ICHI 2015), pp.48-56
10/01/2015
DOI: 10.1109/ICHI.2015.12
Abstract
Online Health Communities (OHCs) have become a major source of social support for people with health problems. Using a case study of an OHC among breast cancer survivors, we revealed the types of social support embedded in each post using text-mining techniques. Then we aggregated users' activities related to different types of social support and identified different roles that users play in an OHC via unsupervised machine learning techniques. By analyzing how users' roles change over time, we constructed a transition graph to illustrate the evolution of users' roles in the OHC. We also discovered that a user's reception of social support is correlated with the evolution of her role. In addition, by examining whom a user interacted with, we found evidence for "role diffusion"--users tend to adopt roles of her network neighbors. Our research has implications for OHC operators to manage and sustain an OHC.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Evolution and Diffusion of User Roles in Online Health Communities - A Social Support Perspective
- Creators
- Xi Wang - University of IowaZhiya Zuo - University of IowaKang Zhao - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- P Balakrishnan (Editor)J Srivatsava (Editor)W T Fu (Editor)S Harabagiu (Editor)F Wang (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Publication Details
- 2015 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS (ICHI 2015), pp.48-56
- Publisher
- IEEE
- DOI
- 10.1109/ICHI.2015.12
- Number of pages
- 9
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2015
- Academic Unit
- Business Analytics; Center for Evaluation and Assessment
- Record Identifier
- 9984380398602771
Metrics
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