8 Narcoleptic Loneliness

Our group decided to investigate support communication within newsgroups for narcolepsy and loneliness. We observed two posts: one from alt.support.loneliness and another from alt.support.narcolepsy. From the two posts that were analyzed, we were able to successfully code a total of 20 support responses.

We found 86% inter-rater reliability, which is statistically significant. The top three response characteristics we found were information (70%), humor (35%), and esteem support (25%). In contrast, Braithwaite’s article entitled “Communication of Social Support in Computer-Mediated Groups for People with Disabilities” found that emotional support was most prominent, followed by informational and finally esteem support. Both Braithwaite and ourselves found that network and tangible support were least commonly found.

A few reasons could have contributed to this discrepancy between our findings. Firstly, our sample size was only 20, whereas Braithwaite examined approximately 1472 responses. It is possible that if we were allotted a greater sample size, our findings may have been more similar. Also, we noticed that the two newsgroups that we analyzed featured a small number of subscribed users, suggestive of small communities of people that are familiar with each other. This dynamic would hijack many of the responses, as users would deviate from the original topic as they developed their own conversations within the thread – usually consisting of shared meaning, inside jokes, and community references.

Another reason that our results may have differed from Braithwaite, is that we analyzed different types of issues than Braithwaite. Whereas Braithwaite coded disability support groups, we analyzed narcolepsy and loneliness. The nature of the forum, as well as the level of concern of the original poster influences the type of responses. For example, the narcolepsy support group contained more emotional and information support than did the loneliness support group. This is due to the fact the original poster in the narcolepsy thread seemed more nervous and upset about his problem than the loneliness poster. Consequently, the narcolepsy support group elicited more emotional and informative support.

We found that our support groups obtained many responses from frequent users, while there were also a few sporadic users present within the group. This contradicts Wallace’s claim that less support is elicited with more people present. Another theorist, Walther, created the four dimensions of online support, namely, social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. Within this theoretical framework, social distance and anonymity are two particular support attributes that contributed to the level of self-disclosure present on the loneliness newsgroup. Similarly, in the narcolepsy newsgroup, people were more likely to discuss the specifics of their medical conditions with strangers, because of the perceived anonymity afforded them in CMC environments.

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Dina Halajian
Robert Grue - Purple
Robert Rowland - Brown