scholarly journals Catch 22: The Paradox of Social Media Affordances and Stigmatized Online Support Groups

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512098447
Author(s):  
Daphna Yeshua-Katz ◽  
Ylva Hård af Segerstad
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Support Groups ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Discussion Board ◽  
Online Support Groups ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Computer Mediated

This study highlights the challenges of computer-mediated communication for vulnerable individuals and groups, by studying boundary work in stigmatized communities online. Five stigmatized online communities with different affordances were studied: (1) “pro-ana” blogs; (2) an infertility discussion board; (3) a Facebook group for bereaved parents; and (4) two WhatsApp groups for Israeli veterans of war with post-traumatic stress disorder. In-depth interviews with members and administrators ( n = 66) revealed that social media affordances such as low anonymity and high visibility may marginalize those living with stigma. While research literature applauds social media for allowing the formation and maintenance of social capital, our study highlights the paradox caused by these very same affordances. To offer safe and functioning environments of support, the communities must guard against impostors whose presence threatens their safe havens. Simultaneously, this may make these groups inaccessible to those who truly need support and remove such groups from the public eye.

scholarly journals Language Style Matching as a Predictor of Perceived Social Support in Computer-Mediated Interaction Among Individuals Coping With Illness

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 694-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Rains
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Support Groups ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Online Support Groups ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Language Style ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Reported Study ◽  
Coping With Illness ◽  
Language Style Matching

Several forms of computer-mediated communication (e.g., online support groups, blogs, social network sites) have been shown to be important resources for social support among individuals coping with illness. The reported study attempts to better understand social support processes in these settings by examining the implications of language style matching—a form of interpersonal coordination involving the degree to which speakers match one another’s use of function words (e.g., articles, prepositions, pronouns). Language style matching among a sample of health bloggers and their readers over a 3-month period was tested as a predictor of bloggers’ perceptions of support available from their readers. The results show that language style matching contributed to bloggers’ perceptions that their readers are willing and able to serve as a resource for specific forms of social support.

scholarly journals The simplicity and emotionality of the language of patients in an online cochlear implant support group

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Magda Żelazowska-Sobczyk ◽  
Magdalena Zabielska
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Support Group ◽  
English Language ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Online Support Groups ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Online Support Group ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Computer Mediated

In the last couple of years online support groups have become one of the most important sources of information and support for people suffering from particular conditions. The goal of the present paper is to examine the language used by the participants of an online support group for people with cochlear implants. The study consists of a qualitative analysis of computer-mediated communication on the basis of the posts and comments made by patients, their families and relatives. The results show that the language used by the participants is characterised by simplicity, emotionality and subjectivity. These features allow one to classify the language as non-specialist, even though some of the forum authors have a long disease history as well as a broad knowledge concerning their condition. This paper is a continuation of the study on English language support groups for people with hearing impairment (Zabielska, Żelazowska-Sobczyk 2019).

Non-standard capitalisation and vocal spelling in intercultural computer-mediated communication

Corpora ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yen-Liang (Eric) Lin
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Discussion Board ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Lower Case ◽  
Python Programming ◽  
Electronic Discussion Board

This study reports on a corpus analysis of samples of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) on an electronic discussion board among a group of British and Taiwanese adolescents, paying specific attention to the most distinctive cues of CMC: non-standard capitalisation and vocal spelling. I evaluate a newly developed corpus of online discussion, the British and Taiwanese Teenage Intercultural Communication Corpus (BATTICC). I used Python programming to calculate all the instances of non-standard capitalisation (specifically, all upper-case words and the use of lower case instead of upper case) and vocal spelling from the corpus, and I also applied Wmatrix to identify the semantic and part-of-speech fields of all these instances. Moreover, initial quantitative analysis was employed to inform further qualitative analysis to identify the pragmatic functions of cues in this intercultural context. It was evident that the CMC cues perform important interpersonal functions, and the analysis demonstrates different preferences by the participants for different purposes.

scholarly journals Card Stories on YouTube: A New Frame for Online Self-Disclosure

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Misoch
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Strong Correlation ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Research Results ◽  
The Public ◽  
Computer Mediated

This paper deals with the phenomenon of so-called (note) card stories on YouTube. Card stories can be described as self-disclosing videos or confessions, using a new frame for telling one’s own story audio-visually to the public by combining ‘old’ (hand-written messages) and ‘new’ media (video, computer mediated communication). In 2012/13, a qualitative and exploratory study with a sample of 25 card story videos on YouTube was conducted. The content and visual analysis revealed (1) that these videos are bound to a very specific frame of presentation, (2) that they deal with specific topics, and (3) that the presenter does not remain (visually) anonymous. These findings question previous research results that stressed a strong correlation between online self-disclosure and (visual) anonymity; further, the findings show that this special frame of textual confessions via video supports deep self-disclosures.

If Pandora had a Blog

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-32
Author(s):  
Otilia Pacea
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Political Blogs ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Digital Landscape

In the context of internet genre migration and proliferation, conventional taxonomies are no longer valid. To classify blogs between thematic and personal blogs is to blissfully ignore the legions of successful content prosumers, from political blogs to travel blogs, from food blogs to MAD (mom and dad) blogs, from fashion blogs to milblogs. With the recent explosion of social media, the digital landscape shifted and today there are more voices online than ever before. For blogs, however, the original purpose for communication has always been twofold: to inform and to emote. Computer-mediated communication may be overpopulated with a myriad of mixed forms and blogs might be dead or simply, difficult to reach with so much overlapping. Yet high-impact blogs still remain and are widely read. This paper explores the language of high-impact blogs, testing a new methodology for genre analysis to solve genre hybridity in the case of computer-mediated discourse.

scholarly journals Word Shortening Strategies: Egyptian vs. Non-Egyptian English Tweets

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Iman Mohamed Mahfouz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Parallel Corpora ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Message Length ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Media Platform

The language of Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) is known to deviate from standard language in many ways dictated by the characteristics of the medium in order to achieve brevity, speed as well as innovation. Together with the intrinsic features of CMC in general, the character limitation imposed by the popular social media platform, Twitter has triggered the use of a number of linguistic devices including shortening strategies in addition to unconventional spelling and grammar. Using two parallel corpora of English tweets written by Egyptians and non-Egyptians on a similar hashtag, the study attempts to compare the shortening strategies used in both datasets. A taxonomy for orthographic and morphological shortening strategies was adapted from Thurlow and Brown (2003) and Denby (2010) with particular focus on message length, punctuation, clipping, abbreviations, contractions, alphanumeric homophones and accent stylization. Given the scarcity of linguistic studies conducted on Egyptian tweets despite the vast amount of data they offer, the study compares the findings about tweets written by Egyptians in English as a foreign language to previous studies. The findings suggest that Egyptians tend to omit punctuation more frequently, whereas non-Egyptians favor abbreviations, contractions and clipped forms. The results also indicate that Twitter may be shifting towards longer messages while at the same time increasingly employing more shortening strategies. The study also reveals that character limitation is not the only factor shaping language use on Twitter since not all linguistic choices are governed by brevity of communication.

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