Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 24, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 21, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Crossing boundaries online: A hybrid-method study of patients’ convergence of mass and interpersonal communication on forums.
ABSTRACT
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 (i.e., convergence). Due to methodological challenges when studying convergence, a holistic view of how patients are using different types of media for needs fulfillment is missing.
Objective:
Obtain insight into the frequency of reported convergence, how convergence affects what posters write online, motives for posting, and the needs posters try to fulfill.
Methods:
Using a hybrid method of content analysis (i.e., the framework method) and supervised machine learning, this study used naturally occurring data to fill this research gap. We analyzed opening posts (N = 1,708) of a forum targeted towards cancer patients and their relatives (Kanker.nl).
Results:
The results show that 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 towards community enhancement and sharing experiences compared to posts without convergence. Furthermore, compared to posts without signs of convergence, posts that include 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 shows how intertwined media platforms are for patients. The insights of this study can be used to adapt the health care system towards 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.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.