Talking about your health to strangers: Understanding the use of online social networks by patients
Abstract
The internet has become a participatory place where everyone can contribute and interact with others. In health in particular, social media have changed traditional patient–physician relationships. Patients are organising themselves in groups, sharing observations and helping each other, although there is still little evidence of the effectiveness of these online communities on people's health. To understand why and how people use health-related sites, we studied these sites and identified three dimensions characterising most of them: informational/supportive; general/focused; and new relationships/existing ones. We conducted an online survey about the use of health-related social networking (SN) sites and learnt that, consistent with previous research, most patients were seeking information about their medical condition online, while, at the same time, still interacting with health professionals to talk about sensitive information and complex issues. We also found that, while people's natural social network played an important role for emotional support, sometimes, people chose to not involve their family, but instead interact with peers online because of their perceived support and ability to understand someone's experience, and also to maintain a comfortable emotional distance. Finally, our results show that people using general SN sites do not necessarily use health-related sites and vice versa.
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Through online social networking, individuals can gain richer emotional support and maintain a more comfortable emotional distance.
“Through online social networking, individuals can not only gain richer emotional support but also maintain a more comfortable emotional distance [70].”
From What Influences Users’ Intention to Share Works in Designer-Driven User-Generated Content Communities? A Study Based on Self-Determination Theory (2023) · cites this paper as [70]
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“In the earlier stages of IT-enabled collaborative tools, SN sites, such as Facebook (http:// www.facebook.com) or Myspace (http://www.myspace.com), provided people with another environment for interacting with their existing social network (Boyd and Ellison 2007, Subrahmanyam et al. 2008).”
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- Authors
- Colineau, N., & Paris, C.
- Affiliations
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Colineau, Nathalie
- ORCID
- Paris, Cécile
- Venue
- New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2010-04
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 141-160
- ISSN
- 0955-8543 (ISSN-L)
- 1361-4568
- 1740-7842
- OpenAlex
- W2032290271
- Cited by
- 126
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 2.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Keywords
- online health communities, physician-patient relationship, patient information seeking, emotional support, peer support, online peer interaction, family involvement, online health information use
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