Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Nov 4, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 8, 2018 - Nov 9, 2018
Date Accepted: Jul 19, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Analyzing the Communication Interchange of Individuals With Disabilities Utilizing Facebook, Discussion Forums, and Chat Rooms: Qualitative Content Analysis of Online Disabilities Support Groups
Background:
Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the United States are currently living with a form of disability. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act has published guidelines to help make developing technology and social networking sites (SNS) more accessible and user-friendly to people with a range of disabilities, persons with disabilities, on average, have less access to the internet than the general population. The quality, content, and medium vary from site to site and have been greatly understudied. Due to this, it is still unclear how persons with disabilities utilize various platforms of online communication for support.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to qualitatively explore and compare the interactions and connections among online support groups across Facebook, discussion forums, and chat rooms to better understand how persons with disabilities were utilizing different SNS to facilitate communication interchange, disseminate information, and foster community support.
Methods:
Facebook groups, discussion forums, and chat rooms were chosen based on predetermined inclusion criteria. Data collected included content posted on Facebook groups, forums, and chat rooms as well as the interactions among group members. Data were analyzed qualitatively using the constant comparative method.
Results:
A total of 133 Facebook posts, 116 forum posts, and 60 hours of chat room discussions were collected and analyzed. In addition, 4 themes were identified for Facebook posts, 3 for discussion forums, and 3 for chat rooms. Persons with disabilities utilized discussion forums and chat rooms in similar ways, but their interactions on Facebook differed in comparison. They seem to interact on a platform based on the specific functions it offers.
Conclusions:
Interactions on each of the platforms displayed elements of the 4 types of social support, indicating the ability for social support to be facilitated among SNS; however, the type of social support varied by platform. Findings demonstrate that online support platforms serve specific purposes that may not be interchangeable. Through participation on different platforms, persons with disabilities are able to provide and receive social support in various ways, without the barriers and constraints often experienced by this population.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.