A linguistic signaling model of social support exchange in online health communities
A linguistic signaling model of social support exchange in online health communities
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DOI：
10.1016/j.dss.2019.113233
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发表时间：
2020-03-01
影响因子：
7.5
通讯作者：
Straub, Detmar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Chen, Langtao;Baird, Aaron;Straub, Detmar
卫生保健消费者和患者越来越多地使用在线卫生社区(OHC)来交换社会支持和提高他们的福祉。然而，人权高专办在促进健康方面的成功不仅取决于参与者张贴活动，而且至关重要的是，还取决于随后是否收到答复。虽然以前的研究已经考虑了增加提供社会支持的可能性的各种机制(例如，建立社会资本)，但还没有考虑语言信号的影响。因此，我们考虑了帖子中的语言信号，包括情感效价、语言风格匹配、可读性、帖子长度和拼写是否影响得到的支持量。本研究采用信号传递理论的总体理论框架，提出了一个解释OHC职位中语言特征在促进OHC参与者提供社会支持方面的信号传递作用的模型。该研究模型在从OHC平台收集的涵盖多种健康状况的大型数据集上进行了经验性测试。结果表明，情感语言信号，包括负面情绪和语言风格匹配，在从社区获得信息支持和情感支持方面是有效的。我们还发现，信息性语言信号，包括可读性、帖子长度和拼写与信息支持接受呈正相关，而可读性和拼写也与情绪支持接受呈正相关。总体而言，本研究不仅丰富了我们对非政府组织中语言信号的理解，而且为改善非政府组织中的社会支持交换提供了实用的见解。
Health care consumers and patients are increasingly using online health communities (OHCs) to exchange social support and enhance their well-being. The success of OHCs in promoting health, however, depends not just on posting activity by participants, but, crucially, on whether or not responses are subsequently received. While previous studies have considered various mechanisms by which the likelihood of social support provisioning can be increased (e.g., the establishment of social capital), the impacts of linguistic signals have yet to be considered. Therefore, we consider whether or not linguistic signals in posts including sentiment valence, linguistic style matching, readability, post length, and spelling impact the amount of support received. Adopting an overarching theoretical framework of signaling theory, this study proposes a model that explains the signaling roles of linguistic features within OHC posts in promoting social support provision from OHC participants. The research model is empirically tested on a large dataset collected from an OHC platform covering multiple health conditions. Results show that affective linguistic signals, including negative sentiment and linguistic style matching, are effective in invoking both informational and emotional support from the community. We also find that informative linguistic signals including readability, post length, and spelling are positively associated with informational support receipt, while readability and spelling are also positively associated with emotional support receipt. Overall, this research not only enriches our current understandings of the linguistic signaling in OHCs, but also provides practical insights into improving social support exchange in OHCs.