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anthony
Founder
I found this quite interesting for a read, based on being a mental health forum. The benefits of being active and participating within an online mental health forum such as MyPTSD.
Lead author Dr Louise Pendry from Psychology at the University of Exeter said: “Our findings paint a more optimistic picture of old-style online discussion forums. Often we browse forums just hoping to find answers to our questions. In fact, as well as finding answers, our study showed users often discover that forums are a source of great support, especially those seeking information about more stigmatising conditions. Moreover, we found that users of both forum types who engaged more with other forum users showed a greater willingness to get involved in offline activities related to the forum, such as volunteering, donating or campaigning.”
Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership. However, little to no work to date has addressed whether this is an effective strategy in the sense of improving users’ well-being or offline civic engagement. To address this question, our research directly compared users’ experiences with two types of forums: forums that address stigmatizing topics (post-natal depression, mental health issues, and non-disposable diaper usage) and forums that are more focused on recreational activities (golf, bodybuilding, and a range of self-identified forums).
We hypothesized that users of the stigma-related forums should reap unique benefits for well-being, relative to users of the recreational forums. We reasoned that members of these forums would feel they had few people to talk to in their day-to-day lives who could truly understand what it means to deal with the stigmatizing characteristic and the accompanying devaluing social reactions. Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralize the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
Lead author Dr Louise Pendry from Psychology at the University of Exeter said: “Our findings paint a more optimistic picture of old-style online discussion forums. Often we browse forums just hoping to find answers to our questions. In fact, as well as finding answers, our study showed users often discover that forums are a source of great support, especially those seeking information about more stigmatising conditions. Moreover, we found that users of both forum types who engaged more with other forum users showed a greater willingness to get involved in offline activities related to the forum, such as volunteering, donating or campaigning.”
Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership. However, little to no work to date has addressed whether this is an effective strategy in the sense of improving users’ well-being or offline civic engagement. To address this question, our research directly compared users’ experiences with two types of forums: forums that address stigmatizing topics (post-natal depression, mental health issues, and non-disposable diaper usage) and forums that are more focused on recreational activities (golf, bodybuilding, and a range of self-identified forums).
We hypothesized that users of the stigma-related forums should reap unique benefits for well-being, relative to users of the recreational forums. We reasoned that members of these forums would feel they had few people to talk to in their day-to-day lives who could truly understand what it means to deal with the stigmatizing characteristic and the accompanying devaluing social reactions. Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralize the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
