Write for Life: Persisting in Online Health Communities through Expressive Writing and Social Support

Authors:
Haiwei Ma

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
C. Estelle Smith

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Lu He

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Saumik Narayanan

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Robert A. Giaquinto

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Roni Evans

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Linda Hanson

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

,
Svetlana Yarosh

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
View Profile

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 1 Issue CSCWArticle No.: 73pp 1–24https://doi.org/10.1145/3134708

Published:06 December 2017Publication History

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

Expressive writing has been shown to improve physical, mental, and social health outcomes for patients struggling with difficult diagnoses. In many online health communities, writing comprises a substantial portion of the user experience, yet little work has explored how writing itself affects user engagement. This paper explores user engagement on CaringBridge, a prominent online community for writing about personal health journeys. We build a survival analysis model, defining a new set of variables that operationalize expressive writing, and comparing these effects to those of social support, which are well-known to benefit user engagement. Furthermore, we use machine learning methods to estimate that approximately one third of community members who self-identify with a cancer condition cease engagement due to literal death. Finally, we provide quantitative evidence that: (1) receiving support, expressive writing, and giving support, in decreasing magnitude of relative impact, are associated with user engagement on CaringBridge, and (2) that considering deceased sites separately in our analysis significantly shifts our interpretations of user behavior.

References

Georg W Alpers, Andrew J Winzelberg, Catherine Classen, Heidi Roberts, Parvati Dev, Cheryl Koopman, and C Barr Taylor. 2005. Evaluation of computerized text analysis in an Internet breast cancer support group. Computers in Human Behavior 21, 2 (2005), 361--376.Google ScholarCross Ref
Isolde K Anderson. 2011. The uses and gratifications of online care pages: a study of CaringBridge. Health communication 26, 6 (2011), 546--559.Google Scholar
Karen A Baikie and Kay Wilhelm. 2005. Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in psychiatric treatment 11, 5 (2005), 338--346.Google Scholar
Antonina Bambina. 2007. Online social support: the interplay of social networks and computer-mediated communication. Cambria press. Google ScholarDigital Library
Christopher E Beaudoin and Chen-Chao Tao. 2008. Modeling the impact of online cancer resources on supporters of cancer patients. New Media & Society 10, 2 (2008), 321--344.Google ScholarCross Ref
Prakhar Biyani, Cornelia Caragea, Prasenjit Mitra, and John Yen. 2014. Identifying Emotional and Informational Support in Online Health Communities. In COLING. 827--836.Google Scholar
Zoheb H Borbora and Jaideep Srivastava. 2012. User behavior modelling approach for churn prediction in online games. In Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust (PASSAT), 2012 International Conference on and 2012 International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom). IEEE, 51--60. Google ScholarDigital Library
Stephanie L Brown, Randolph M Nesse, Amiram D Vinokur, and Dylan M Smith. 2003. Providing social support may be more beneficial than receiving it results from a prospective study of mortality. Psychological Science 14, 4 (2003), 320--327.Google ScholarCross Ref
Jed R Brubaker and Gillian R Hayes. 2011. We will never forget you {online}: An empirical investigation of post-mortem MySpace comments. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM, 123--132. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jed R Brubaker, Gillian R Hayes, and Paul Dourish. 2013. Beyond the grave: Facebook as a site for the expansion of death and mourning. The Information Society 29, 3 (2013), 152--163. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jed R Brubaker and Janet Vertesi. 2010. Death and the social network. In Proc. CHI Workshop on Death and the Digital.Google Scholar
Amy S Bruckman, Casey Fiesler, Jeff Hancock, and Cosmin Munteanu. 2017. CSCW Research Ethics Town Hall: Working Towards Community Norms. In Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ACM, 113--115. Google ScholarDigital Library
Moira Burke, Cameron Marlow, and Thomas Lento. 2009. Feed me: motivating newcomer contribution in social network sites. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, 945--954. Google ScholarDigital Library
Chad M Burton and Laura A King. 2004. The health benefits of writing about intensely positive experiences. Journal of research in personality 38, 2 (2004), 150--163.Google ScholarCross Ref
Linda D Cameron and Gregory Nicholls. 1998. Expression of stressful experiences through writing: Effects of a self-regulation manipulation for pessimists and optimists. Health Psychology 17, 1 (1998), 84.Google ScholarCross Ref
Leslie F Clark. 1993. Stress and the cognitive-conversational benefits of social interaction. Journal of social and clinical psychology 12, 1 (1993), 25--55.Google ScholarCross Ref
Melissa A Craft, Gail C Davis, and René M Paulson. 2013. Expressive writing in early breast cancer survivors. Journal of Advanced Nursing 69, 2 (2013), 305--315.Google ScholarCross Ref
J David Creswell, Suman Lam, Annette L Stanton, Shelley E Taylor, Julienne E Bower, and David K Sherman. 2007. Does self-affirmation, cognitive processing, or discovery of meaning explain cancer-related health benefits of expressive writing? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33, 2 (2007), 238--250.Google ScholarCross Ref
Carolyn E Cutrona and Julie A Suhr. 1994. Social support communication in the context of marriage: an analysis of couples' supportive interactions. (1994).Google Scholar
Jeremy Dean, Henry WW Potts, and Chris Barker. 2016. Direction to an internet support group compared with online expressive writing for people with depression and anxiety: a randomized trial. JMIR mental health 3, 2 (2016).Google Scholar
Benjamín Domínguez, Pablo Valderrama, María de los Angeles Meza, Sara Lidia Pérez, Amparo Silva, Gloria Martínez, Victor Manuel Méndez, and Yolanda Olvera. 1995. The roles of disclosure and emotional reversal in clinical practice. (1995).Google Scholar
Gideon Dror, Dan Pelleg, Oleg Rokhlenko, and Idan Szpektor. 2012. Churn prediction in new users of Yahoo! answers. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web. ACM, 829--834. Google ScholarDigital Library
Christine Dunkel-Schetter. 1984. Social support and cancer: Findings based on patient interviews and their implications. Journal of Social issues 40, 4 (1984), 77--98.Google ScholarCross Ref
Brian A Esterling, Michael H Antoni, Mary Ann fletcher, Scott Margulies, and Neil Schneiderman. 1994. Emotional disclosure through writing or speaking modulates latent Epstein-Barr virus antibody titers. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 62, 1 (1994), 130.Google ScholarCross Ref
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2015. Five-Year Relative Survival. https://nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/Survival/ Relative_Survival_Tables.pdf. (2015). Online; Accessed: 2017-07-01.Google Scholar
Susannah Fox. 2011. The social life of health information, 2011. Pew Internet & American Life Project Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Joanne Frattaroli. 2006. Experimental disclosure and its moderators: a meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin 132, 6 (2006), 823.Google Scholar
Pasquale G Frisina, Joan C Borod, and Stephen J Lepore. 2004. A meta-analysis of the effects of written emotional disclosure on the health outcomes of clinical populations. The Journal of nervous and mental disease 192, 9 (2004), 629--634.Google ScholarCross Ref
David C Giles and Julie Newbold. 2011. Self-and other-diagnosis in user-led mental health online communities. Qualitative Health Research 21, 3 (2011), 419--428.Google ScholarCross Ref
Robert L Glueckauf, Timothy U Ketterson, Jeffrey S Loomis, and Pat Dages. 2004. Online support and education for dementia caregivers: overview, utilization, and initial program evaluation. Telemedicine Journal & E-Health 10, 2 (2004), 223--232.Google ScholarCross Ref
Melanie A Greenberg and Arthur A Stone. 1992. Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity. Journal of personality and social psychology 63, 1 (1992), 75.Google ScholarCross Ref
Melanie A Greenberg, Camille B Wortman, and Arthur A Stone. 1996. Emotional expression and physical heath: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation? Journal of personality and social psychology 71, 3 (1996), 588.Google ScholarCross Ref
Adam J Guastella and Mark R Dadds. 2006. Cognitive-behavioral models of emotional writing: A validation study. Cognitive Therapy and Research 30, 3 (2006), 397--414.Google ScholarCross Ref
Michael Hardey. 2002. 'The story of my Illness': Personal Accounts of Illness on the Internet. Health: 6, 1 (2002), 31--46.Google Scholar
Vicki S Helgeson, Sheldon Cohen, Richard Schulz, and Joyce Yasko. 2001. Long-term effects of educational and peer discussion group interventions on adjustment to breast cancer. Health Psychology 20, 5 (2001), 387.Google ScholarCross Ref
Erika A Henry, Rebecca J Schlegel, Amelia E Talley, Lisa A Molix, and B Bettencourt. 2010. The feasibility and effectiveness of expressive writing for rural and urban breast cancer survivors. In oncology nursing forum, Vol. 37.Google Scholar
Kasper Hornbæk, Søren S Sander, Javier Andrés Bargas-Avila, and Jakob Grue Simonsen. 2014. Is once enough?: on the extent and content of replications in human-computer interaction. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 3523--3532. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jeffrey H Kahn, Renee M Tobin, Audra E Massey, and Jennifer A Anderson. 2007. Measuring emotional expression with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. The American journal of psychology (2007), 263--286.Google Scholar
Raghav Pavan Karumur, Tien T Nguyen, and Joseph A Konstan. 2016. Early Activity Diversity: Assessing Newcomer Retention from First-Session Activity. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 595--608. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jaya Kawale, Aditya Pal, and Jaideep Srivastava. 2009. Churn prediction in MMORPGs: A social influence based approach. In Computational Science and Engineering, 2009. CSE'09. International Conference on, Vol. 4. IEEE, 423--428. Google ScholarDigital Library
Laura A King. 2001. The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27, 7 (2001), 798--807.Google ScholarCross Ref
Kitty Klein and Adriel Boals. 2001. Expressive writing can increase working memory capacity. Journal of experimental psychology: General 130, 3 (2001), 520.Google ScholarCross Ref
Neal Krause, A Regula Herzog, and Elizabeth Baker. 1992. Providing support to others and well-being in later life. Journal of gerontology 47, 5 (1992), P300--P311.Google ScholarCross Ref
Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk. 2008. Facilitating adaptive emotional analysis: Distinguishing distanced-analysis of depressive experiences from immersed-analysis and distraction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, 7 (2008), 924--938.Google ScholarCross Ref
Margaret Laccetti. 2007. Expressive writing in women with advanced breast cancer. In Oncology Nursing Forum, Vol. 34.Google ScholarCross Ref
Lynne Lamberg. 2003. Online empathy for mood disorders. JAMA 289, 23 (2003), 3073--3077.Google ScholarCross Ref
Stephen J Lepore. 1997. Expressive writing moderates the relation between intrusive thoughts and depressive symptoms. Journal of personality and social psychology 73, 5 (1997), 1030.Google ScholarCross Ref
Stephen J Lepore and Melanie A Greenberg. 2002. Mending broken hearts: Effects of expressive writing on mood, cognitive processing, social adjustment and health following a relationship breakup. Psychology and Health 17, 5 (2002), 547--560.Google ScholarCross Ref
Carissa A Low, Annette L Stanton, and Sharon Danoff-Burg. 2006. Expressive disclosure and benefit finding among breast cancer patients: mechanisms for positive health effects. Health Psychology 25, 2 (2006), 181.Google ScholarCross Ref
Diane Maloney-Krichmar and Jenny Preece. 2005. A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 12, 2 (2005), 201--232. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jennifer Mankoff, Kateryna Kuksenok, Sara Kiesler, Jennifer A Rode, and Kelly Waldman. 2011. Competing online viewpoints and models of chronic illness. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 589--598. Google ScholarDigital Library
Traci Mann. 2001. Effects of future writing and optimism on health behaviors in HIV-infected women. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 23, 1 (2001), 26--33.Google ScholarCross Ref
Michael Massimi and Ronald M Baecker. 2010. A death in the family: opportunities for designing technologies for the bereaved. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. ACM, 1821--1830. Google ScholarDigital Library
Michael Massimi and Ronald M Baecker. 2011. Dealing with death in design: developing systems for the bereaved. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1001--1010. Google ScholarDigital Library
Michael Massimi, Jackie L Bender, Holly O Witteman, and Osman H Ahmed. 2014. Life transitions and online health communities: reflecting on adoption, use, and disengagement. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing. ACM, 1491--1501. Google ScholarDigital Library
Michael Massimi and Andrea Charise. 2009. Dying, death, and mortality: towards thanatosensitivity in HCI. In CHI'09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2459--2468. Google ScholarDigital Library
Michael Massimi, William Odom, Richard Banks, and David Kirk. 2011. Matters of life and death: locating the end of life in lifespan-oriented HCI research. In Proceedings of the sigchi conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, 987--996. Google ScholarDigital Library
Andrea Meier, Elizabeth J Lyons, Gilles Frydman, Michael Forlenza, and Barbara K Rimer. 2007. How cancer survivors provide support on cancer-related Internet mailing lists. J Med Internet Res 9, 2 (2007), e12.Google ScholarCross Ref
Erin L Merz, Rina S Fox, and Vanessa L Malcarne. 2014. Expressive writing interventions in cancer patients: a systematic review. Health psychology review 8, 3 (2014), 339--361.Google Scholar
Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov. 2010. Myths and fallacies of personally identifiable information. Commun. ACM 53, 6 (2010), 24--26. Google ScholarDigital Library
Mark W Newman, Debra Lauterbach, Sean A Munson, Paul Resnick, and Margaret E Morris. 2011. It's not that I don't have problems, I'm just not putting them on Facebook: challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM, 341--350. Google ScholarDigital Library
Heather L O'Brien and Elaine G Toms. 2008. What is user engagement? A conceptual framework for defining user engagement with technology. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 59, 6 (2008), 938--955. Google ScholarDigital Library
Pok-Ja Oh and Soo Hyun Kim. 2016. The Effects of Expressive Writing Interventions for Patients With Cancer: A Meta-Analysis. In Oncology nursing forum, Vol. 43. 468.Google Scholar
Jason E Owen, Janine Giese-Davis, Matt Cordova, Carol Kronenwetter, Mitch Golant, and David Spiegel. 2006. Selfreport and linguistic indicators of emotional expression in narratives as predictors of adjustment to cancer. Journal of behavioral medicine 29, 4 (2006), 335--345.Google ScholarCross Ref
Jason E Owen, Joshua C Klapow, David L Roth, and Diane C Tucker. 2004. Use of the internet for information and support: disclosure among persons with breast and prostate cancer. Journal of behavioral medicine 27, 5 (2004), 491--505.Google ScholarCross Ref
Fabian Pedregosa, Gaël Varoquaux, Alexandre Gramfort, Vincent Michel, Bertrand Thirion, Olivier Grisel, Mathieu Blondel, Peter Prettenhofer, Ron Weiss, Vincent Dubourg, et al. 2011. Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python. Journal of Machine Learning Research 12, Oct (2011), 2825--2830. Google ScholarDigital Library
James W Pennebaker. 1997. Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological science 8, 3 (1997), 162--166.Google Scholar
James W Pennebaker and Sandra K Beall. 1986. Confronting a traumatic event: toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of abnormal psychology 95, 3 (1986), 274.Google ScholarCross Ref
James W Pennebaker, Ryan L Boyd, Kayla Jordan, and Kate Blackburn. 2015. The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2015. Technical Report.Google Scholar
James W Pennebaker, Michelle Colder, and Lisa K Sharp. 1990. Accelerating the coping process. Journal of personality and social psychology 58, 3 (1990), 528.Google ScholarCross Ref
James W Pennebaker, Janice K Kiecolt-Glaser, and Ronald Glaser. 1988. Disclosure of traumas and immune function: health implications for psychotherapy. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 56, 2 (1988), 239.Google ScholarCross Ref
James W Pennebaker, Tracy J Mayne, and Martha E Francis. 1997. Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement. Journal of personality and social psychology 72, 4 (1997), 863.Google ScholarCross Ref
Jenny Preece, Blair Nonnecke, and Dorine Andrews. 2004. The top fve reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone. Computers in human behavior 20, 2 (2004), 201--223.Google Scholar
Farzana Rahman, Ivor D Addo, and Sheikh I Ahamed. 2014. PriSN: a privacy protection framework for healthcare social networking sites. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Research in Adaptive and Convergent Systems. ACM, 66--71. Google ScholarDigital Library
Martina Reynolds, Chris R Brewin, and Matthew Saxton. 2000. Emotional disclosure in school children. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 41, 2 (2000), 151--159.Google ScholarCross Ref
Jane M Richards, Wanda E Beal, Janel D Seagal, and James W Pennebaker. 2000. Effects of disclosure of traumatic events on illness behavior among psychiatric prison inmates. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 109, 1 (2000), 156.Google ScholarCross Ref
Shelly Rodgers and Qimei Chen. 2005. Internet community group participation: Psychosocial benefits for women with breast cancer. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10, 4 (2005), 00--00.Google ScholarCross Ref
Sabirat Rubya and Svetlana Yarosh. 2017. Video-Mediated Peer Support in an Online Community for Recovery from Substance Use Disorders. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ACM, 1454--1469. Google ScholarDigital Library
P Servaes, AJJM Vingerhoets, G Vreugdenhil, JJ Keuning, and AM Broekhuijsen. 1999. Inhibition of emotional expression in breast cancer patients. Behavioral Medicine 25, 1 (1999), 23--27.Google ScholarCross Ref
Bret R Shaw, Fiona McTavish, Robert Hawkins, David H Gustafson, and Suzanne Pingree. 2000. Experiences of women with breast cancer: exchanging social support over the CHESS computer network. Journal of health communication 5, 2 (2000), 135--159.Google ScholarCross Ref
Elizabeth Sillence. 2013. Giving and receiving peer advice in an online breast cancer support group. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 16, 6 (2013), 480--485.Google ScholarCross Ref
Åsa Smedberg. 2008. Online communities and learning for health: The use of online health communities and online expertise for people with established bad habits. Ph.D. Dissertation. Institutionen för data-och systemvetenskap (tills m KTH).Google Scholar
Joshua M Smyth. 1998. Written emotional expression: effect sizes, outcome types, and moderating variables. (1998).Google Scholar
Stefanie P Spera, Eric D Buhrfeind, and James W Pennebaker. 1994. Expressive writing and coping with job loss. Academy of management journal 37, 3 (1994), 722--733.Google ScholarCross Ref
Annette L Stanton and Sharon Danoff-Burg. 2002. Emotional expression, expressive writing, and cancer. (2002).Google Scholar
Annette L Stanton, Sharon Danoff-Burg, Lisa A Sworowski, Charlotte A Collins, Ann D Branstetter, Alicia RodriguezHanley, Sarah B Kirk, and Jennifer L Austenfeld. 2002. Randomized, controlled trial of written emotional expression and benefit finding in breast cancer patients. Journal of Clinical Oncology 20, 20 (2002), 4160--4168.Google ScholarCross Ref
Acar Tamersoy, Munmun De Choudhury, and Duen Horng Chau. 2015. Characterizing smoking and drinking abstinence from social media. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media. ACM, 139--148. Google ScholarDigital Library
Yla R Tausczik and James W Pennebaker. 2010. The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of language and social psychology 29, 1 (2010), 24--54.Google ScholarCross Ref
Philip M Ullrich and Susan K Lutgendorf. 2002. Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 24, 3 (2002), 244--250.Google ScholarCross Ref
Xi Wang, Kang Zhao, and Nick Street. 2014. Social support and user engagement in online health communities. In International Conference on Smart Health. Springer, 97--110.Google ScholarCross Ref
Yi-Chia Wang, Robert Kraut, and John M Levine. 2012. To stay or leave?: the relationship of emotional and informational support to commitment in online health support groups. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. ACM, 833--842. Google ScholarDigital Library
Marsha White and Steve M Dorman. 2001. Receiving social support online: implications for health education. Health education research 16, 6 (2001), 693--707.Google Scholar
Erin Willis. 2014. The making of expert patients: the role of online health communities in arthritis self-management. Journal of health psychology 19, 12 (2014), 1613--1625.Google ScholarCross Ref
Andrew J Winzelberg, Catherine Classen, Georg W Alpers, Heidi Roberts, Cheryl Koopman, Robert E Adams, Heidemarie Ernst, Parvati Dev, and C Barr Taylor. 2003. Evaluation of an internet support group for women with primary breast cancer. Cancer 97, 5 (2003), 1164--1173.Google ScholarCross Ref
Diyi Yang, Robert Kraut, and John M Levine. 2017. Commitment of Newcomers and Old-timers to Online Health Support Communities. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 6363--6375. Google ScholarDigital Library
Jiang Yang, Xiao Wei, Mark S Ackerman, and Lada A Adamic. 2010. Activity Lifespan: An Analysis of User Survival Patterns in Online Knowledge Sharing Communities. ICWSM 10 (2010), 186--193.Google Scholar
Woohyun Yoo, Kang Namkoong, Mina Choi, Dhavan V Shah, Stephanie Tsang, Yangsun Hong, Michael Aguilar, and David H Gustafson. 2014. Giving and receiving emotional support online: Communication competence as a moderator of psychosocial benefits for women with breast cancer. Computers in human behavior 30 (2014), 13--22. Google ScholarDigital Library
Bowen Yu, Yuqing Ren, Loren Terveen, and Haiyi Zhu. 2017. Predicting Member Productivity and Withdrawal from Pre-Joining Attachments in Online Production Groups. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ACM, 1775--1784. Google ScholarDigital Library
Chunlan Zhou, Yanni Wu, Shengli An, and Xiaojin Li. 2015. Effect of Expressive Writing Intervention on Health Outcomes in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. PloS one 10, 7 (2015), e0131802.Google Scholar
Haiyi Zhu, Robert E Kraut, and Aniket Kittur. 2014. The impact of membership overlap on the survival of online communities. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 281--290. Google ScholarDigital Library
Sue Ziebland, Alison Chapple, Carol Dumelow, Julie Evans, Suman Prinjha, and Linda Rozmovits. 2004. How the internet affects patients' experience of cancer: a qualitative study. Bmj 328, 7439 (2004), 564.Google Scholar

Index Terms

Write for Life: Persisting in Online Health Communities through Expressive Writing and Social Support
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

Recommendations

Detecting Expressive Writing in Online Health Communities by Modeling Aggregated Empirical Data
CSCW

Although expressive writing has proved to be beneficial on physical, mental, and social health of individuals, it has been restrained to lab-based experimental studies. In the real world, individuals may naturally engage with expressive writing when ...
Read More
"I Cannot Do All of This Alone": Exploring Instrumental and Prayer Support in Online Health Communities

Instrumental support is critical for patients and family caregivers facing life-threatening illnesses, injuries, or chronic conditions (e.g., cancer). We partner with CaringBridge.org—a prominent online health community for journaling about health ...
Read More
Knowledge Sharing and Community Promotion in Online Health Communities: Examining the Relationship Between Social Support, Community Commitment, and Trust Transfer
Social Computing and Social Media. Participation, User Experience, Consumer Experience, and Applications of Social Computing
Abstract
Online health communities (OHCs) have now become a valuable platform for people to seek health-related information. Knowledge sharing and community promotion in the OHCs are critical to sustain their continuous use and improve their engagement. ...
Read More

Comments

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

Published in
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 1, Issue CSCW
November 2017
2095 pages
EISSN:2573-0142
DOI:10.1145/3171581
Editors:
Clifford Lampe
University of Michigan
,
Jeff Nichols
Google
,
Karrie Karahalios
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
,
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Uichin Lee
KAIST
,
Andres Monroy-Hernandez
Snap Inc.
,
Wolfgang Stuerzlinger
Simon Fraser University
Issue’s Table of Contents
Copyright © 2017 ACM
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Sponsors
In-Cooperation
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
- Published: 6 December 2017
Published in pacmhci Volume 1, Issue CSCW

Permissions
Request permissions about this article.
Request Permissions

Check for updates
Author Tags
CaringBridge
death
expressive writing
online health community
social support
user engagement
Qualifiers
- research-article
Conference
Funding Sources
Other Metrics
View Article Metrics

Article Metrics
- 48
  Total Citations
  View Citations
- 1,316
  Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)208
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)21
Other Metrics
View Author Metrics
Cited By
View all

PDF Format

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Write for Life: Persisting in Online Health Communities through Expressive Writing and Social Support

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Detecting Expressive Writing in Online Health Communities by Modeling Aggregated Empirical Data

"I Cannot Do All of This Alone": Exploring Instrumental and Prayer Support in Online Health Communities

Knowledge Sharing and Community Promotion in Online Health Communities: Examining the Relationship Between Social Support, Community Commitment, and Trust Transfer