scholarly journals Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512096520
Author(s):  
Brent J. Hale ◽  
Ryan Collins ◽  
Danielle K. Kilgo

People who are affected by cancer can benefit greatly from social support and digital social networks, though our understanding of online support is primarily founded in dominant platforms like Facebook. In addition, while previous scholarship indicates that social support is available online, little research has examined predictors of support provision. A content analysis was performed to examine the relationship between narrative features in Imgur posts and social support in comments. Imgur ( Imgur.com ) is a social media site and image-hosting platform, amassing over 250 million monthly visitors. Six post features were hypothesized to predict support, including explanations of the diagnosis experience, evidence of agentive problem solving, indications of positive reappraisal, pleads for the audience to get a checkup, references to mortality, and inclusion of humor. The results of this study indicate a relationship between narrative construction and social support, finding that the inclusion of narrative features in cancer-related posts influenced the provision of support in comments. Findings of this study could have implications for a multitude of stakeholders interested in social support provision, including healthcare professionals and researchers interested in the use of social media platforms for support, and organizations interested in designing supportive online platforms for individuals coping with cancer.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 205520761989047 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent J Hale

Objectives A growing body of health communication scholarship has explored the utility of social media platforms for eliciting social support, although much of this scholarship has focused on Facebook and Twitter. This study contributes to this body of research by identifying support in comments submitted to depression-related Imgur posts. Furthermore, the use of non-bona fide linguistic features (e.g. humor, sarcasm, and irony) is documented for comparison with supportive elements. Methods A content analysis was performed of 1530 comments submitted in response to 20 popular Imgur posts about depression, including the emergence of four social support types outlined by the Multi-Dimensional Support Scale—reassuring, empathic, informational, and tangible support—as well as non-bona fide features. Results Findings suggest a supportive discourse, with nearly 60% of comments containing some supportive element. Reassuring and informational support emerged most prominently (26.3% and 26.2% of comments, respectively), followed by empathic (22.9%) and tangible (0.3%) support types. Non-bona fide features manifested in 28.8% of comments. Results indicate significant covariation between non-bona fide features and support, as these infrequently co-occurred. Conclusions This study’s findings suggest that depression-related messages frequently receive support from Imgur commenters, especially reassuring and informational support. Additionally, this study provides a conceptual framework for future analyses of online social support by integrating non-bona fide communication with established support types. The results of this study could have implications for health professionals and scholars interested in the use of social media platforms such as Imgur, which serves a predominantly young male demographic, for support provision.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (44) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Busra ERTOGRUL ◽  
Gizem KILICSIZ ◽  
Aysun BOZANTA

Social media platforms have become an inevitable part of our daily lives. Companies that noticed the intense use of social media platforms started to use them as a marketing tool. Even ordinary people have become famous by social media and companies have been sending their products to them to try and advertise. Many people have gained a considerable amount of money in this way and today new jobs are emerged like "Youtuber" and "Instagram Influencer". Therefore, ordinary people realized the power of social media and many people started to strength their digital identity over social media. The question raising in people’s mind is that “What is the difference between the influencers and the ordinary people who have also digital identity over social media?”. This study examined Instagram influencers for five categories namely fashion, makeup, photography, travel, and fitness in Turkey. As an exploratory study, the relationship between the influencers’ average number of posts, the number of likes, the number of views, the number of comments, number of followers, and the number of following were examined. As well as the engagement rates of the followers to the influencers were calculated. In addition, the words they mostly used in the captions of the posts were examined.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongzhong Yang ◽  
Zobi Khan ◽  
Yu Zhang

The development of social media has changed traditional media by providing a platform to conduct marketing and advertising activities. Nowadays, social media offers the opportunity to build a relationship between customers and brands. The strategic use of social media marketing has significant importance for customers as well as for marketers. In this paper, the influence of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) is assessed on apparel brands’ perceived value and Chinese customers’ satisfaction. The data was collected through a quantitative survey-based approach from Chinese social media and apparel brands’ users (n = 355). The collected data from respondents were analysed through the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Hayes PROCESS macro. Based on our findings, it is noted that SMMAs play an essential role in improving the brand perceived value and customers’ satisfaction in China. Moreover, it is also concluded that the apparel brand’s perceived value significantly mediates the relationship between SMMAs and customers’ satisfaction. This study provides several theoretical and practical guidelines to the marketers in China to effectively implement their advertising activities on social media platforms.


Author(s):  
Umoloyouvwe Ejiro Onomake

Ethnography has been used to research various people and topics online, primarily using netnography and digital ethnography. Researchers and businesses employ digital ethnographic methods to access an assortment of social media platforms in order to learn about social media users. Researchers seek to understand relationships between social media users and organizations from both academic and practitioner perspectives. These organizations run the gamut from for-profit businesses, to nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government agencies. The specific focus here is on social media research as it relates to businesses. Organizations make use of social media in a variety of ways, but chiefly to market to clients and to gather information on followers; the latter of which, in turn, helps them understand their target markets. While this social media data is both quantitative and qualitative in nature, the emphasis here centers on qualitative data, particularly the ways businesses interact with social media users. While some firms mainly use older forms of one-way marketing that solely focus on disseminating information, other firms increasingly seek ways to interact with customers and co-create products with clients. Additionally, social media users are creating their own communities, formed due to a shared interest in a brand. Companies strive to learn more about their customers through these groups. Influencers also play a role in the relationship between organizations and social media users by linking their own followerships to products and brands. In turn, influencers develop their own relationships with organizations through sponsorships, thus becoming brands themselves. Influencers risk losing their followerships when followers perceive them as no longer accessible or authentic. This change in perception can occur for a variety of reasons, including when followers believe that an influencer has prioritized brand alignment over building connections with followers. Due to multiple relationships with different brands and their followers, influencers must negotiate the ambiguity and evolving nature of their role. As social media and digital spaces develop, so must the tools used by anthropologists. Anthropologists should remain open to incorporating hallmarks of ethnographic research such as fieldnotes, participant observation, and focus groups in new ways and alongside tools from other disciplines, including market and UX (user experience) research. The divide between practitioners and academics is blurring. Anthropologists can solve client issues while contributing their voices to larger anthropological and societal discussions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110443
Author(s):  
Maria Nordbrandt

There is considerable disagreement among scholars as to whether social media fuels polarization in society. However, a few have considered the possibility that polarization may instead affect social media usage. To address this gap, the study uses Dutch panel data to test directionality in the relationship between social media use and affective polarization. No support was found for the hypothesis that social media use contributed to the level of affective polarization. Instead, the results lend support to the hypothesis that it was the level of affective polarization that affected subsequent use of social media. The results furthermore reveal heterogeneous patterns among individuals, depending on their previous level of social media usage, and across different social media platforms. The study gives reason to call into question the predominating assumption in previous research that social media is a major driver of polarization in society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Jonathan B. Lamano ◽  
Robert A. Riestenberg ◽  
Aden P. Haskell-Mendoza ◽  
Dennis Lee ◽  
Michael T. Sharp ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE Patients increasingly utilize online physician review websites (PRWs) and social media to inform healthcare-related decisions. This provides neurosurgeons with opportunities for increased patient engagement. And despite the growing use of social media among neurosurgeons, the relationship between social media utilization and online reviews remains unknown. The goal of this study was to characterize the relationship between social media utilization and PRW ratings across academic neurosurgery departments. METHODS Social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) of academic neurosurgery departments were identified. Online reviews for individual faculty were obtained from Healthgrades, Vitals, WebMD, and Google. Reviews were aggregated to identify the total number of reviews per department, to generate a composite departmental rating, and to calculate a summed departmental score. US News & World Report (USNWR) and Doximity rankings were recorded for each department. Social media utilization by individual neurosurgeons and associated ratings were investigated within the departments with the highest social media utilization. RESULTS Seventy-eight percent of academic neurosurgery departments utilized social media. The most prevalent platform was YouTube (49.1%), followed by Twitter (46.5%), Facebook (38.6%), and Instagram (16.7%). Higher patient ratings on PRWs were associated with the utilization of YouTube (p = 0.048) or Twitter (p = 0.02). The number of social media platforms utilized demonstrated a significant, positive correlation with patient ratings (p = 0.006) and summed patient ratings (p = 0.048). Although USNWR (p = 0.02) and Doximity (p = 0.0008) rankings correlated with patient ratings, only the number of social media platforms utilized remained a significant predictor of patient ratings on multivariate analysis (p = 0.0001). Thirty-one percent of academic neurosurgeons from departments with high social media utilization were active on social media. The most prevalent social media platform among individual neurosurgeons was Twitter (27.4%), followed by Instagram (8.4%), Facebook (4.9%), and YouTube (2.2%). Higher summed patient scores were associated with individual neurosurgeon utilization of YouTube (p = 0.04), Facebook (p < 0.0001), and Instagram (p = 0.01). Increased social media utilization among neurosurgeons was correlated with a greater number of patient reviews (p = 0.006) and higher summed patient scores (p = 0.003). On multivariate analysis, only Facebook use remained a significant predictor of the number of patient reviews received (p = 0.002) and summed patient satisfaction scores (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS An increased social media presence is associated with higher ratings on PRWs. As neurosurgeons continue to expand their online presence, they should be aware of the possible impact of social media on online patient reviews.


2022 ◽  
pp. 363-384
Author(s):  
Murat Koçyiğit ◽  
Büşra Küçükcivil

The development of digital communication technologies and the increase in the use of digital platforms by individuals have increased the tendency towards touristic activities. Cultural tourism, which is carried out for certain purposes within the diversity of tourism, is one of the rising tourism activities of recent times. In this context, tourism management benefits from social media platforms as a tool in marketing their products and services related to cultural tourism. Social media platforms are important here for two aspects. The first of these is the use of social media by tourism management in the marketing of products and services by organizing individual and mass cultural tours and communicating with target audiences. The second is that individuals benefit from social media platforms in participating in cultural tourism and decision making. In this direction, it is important to evaluate conceptually the relationship between social media platforms, one of the most important digital communication technologies, and cultural tourism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 705-715
Author(s):  
Donald R. Gerke ◽  
Mary M. Step ◽  
Dennis Rünger ◽  
Jesse B. Fletcher ◽  
Ronald A. Brooks ◽  
...  

Social media platforms offer the opportunity to develop online social networks. Use of these platforms has been particularly attractive to younger sexual and gender minority individuals as well as those living with HIV. This cross-sectional study examined the perceived level of social support and associations with social media use among youth and young adult cisgender men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender (trans) women living with HIV and examined these associations by gender identity. The study drew from baseline data collected from 612 cisgender MSM and 162 trans women enrolling in one of 10 demonstration sites that were part of a Health Resources and Services Administration Special Projects of National Significance initiative. The individual projects were designed to evaluate the potential for social media/mobile technology–based interventions to improve retention in care and HIV health outcomes. The data used in this study came from baseline surveys completed when participants enrolled in a site between October 2016 and May 2018. Results demonstrated that a significantly greater proportion of MSM than trans women participants reported the use of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook: MSM = 86%, trans women = 62%; Instagram: MSM = 65%, trans women = 35%). Furthermore, increased social media use improved perceptions of social support only among MSM participants (direct adjusted OR = 1.49) and not trans women participants (gender identity interaction term adjusted OR = 0.64). These results revealed that MSM participants perceived greater social benefit from the use of social media platforms than trans women, which could be a result of generalized online transphobia experienced by trans women. More nuanced data on various social media platforms, that is, anonymous versus profile-based, and group differences, are needed to better understand how social media platforms can be best utilized to optimize health care outcomes among sexual and gender minority youth and young adults living with HIV.


Author(s):  
Sally Quinn

Despite the negative press social media platforms like Facebook receive in mainstream media, there is a large amount of research showing positive associations with their use. Although it is accepted that there are potential negative effects associated with using these platforms, this chapter focuses on the positive aspects and discusses the evidence, showing that the use of social media platforms can be positively associated with feelings of connectedness with others, to providing and receiving social support from others (e.g., social capital), and to psychological well-being. The chapter also examines the evidence suggesting that certain groups of people (e.g., socially anxious) may be more likely to reap these benefits. Finally, the chapter examines the evidence showing how the use of social media by young people specifically has been seen to have some relationship with positive outcomes.


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