How users exchange their opinions and spread social support in social networks

我对计算社会科学和社会计算感兴趣。我的研究目标是创建社交媒体来促进社会支持，并使人们能够建立更牢固的关系。为了给社交媒体的设计提供信息，我渴望在研究生阶段研究用户如何在社交网络中交换意见和传播社会支持。例如，我希望了解移情在网络社区中的作用。虽然线下共情对个体的心理健康状态有积极的影响，因此被广泛应用于治疗中，但我们并不清楚它对在线心理健康社区背景下用户的感受或互动的影响。因此，我想用混合方法来弥补这一研究空白。具体而言，我将从典型的在线心理健康社区收集数据，并进行因果分析，以检验在线共情的影响；然后我将采访用户，以更好地了解同理心是如何影响他们的。本研究将对共情研究的整体图景具有理论意义和贡献。在更广泛的意义上，本研究将提供对在线心理健康社区在线交流的理解的见解。这也将有助于在线心理健康社区的设计，以更好地支持其成员。

I am interested in computational social science and social computing. My research goal is to create social media to facilitate social support and empower people to build stronger relationships. In order to inform the design of social media, I am eager to examine how users exchange their opinions and spread social support in social networks during my graduate study. For example, I hope to understand the effect of empathy in online communities. Although offline empathy is known to have positive effect on individuals' mental health state and is therefore widely used in therapies, we are not clear about its impact on users' feelings or interactions in the context of online mental health communities. Therefore, I want to use mix-method to address this research gap. Specifically, I will collect data from typical online mental health communities and conduct causal analysis to examine the effect of online empathy; then I will interview users to better understand how empathy affect them. This study will have theoretical significance and contribution to the big picture of research on empathy. In a broader sense, this study will provide insights into the understanding of online communication in online mental health communities. It will also be helpful for the design of online mental health communities to better support their members.