Psycholinguistic Properties of Informational Support Seeking Posts in Online Health Communities and Predictors of Community Responsiveness

Abstract

Although informational support can be a valuable resource for coping with illness, our understanding of how it is solicited remains incomplete. We examine the language properties of more than 20,000 posts made to an online health community to better understand the perspective of people seeking informational support and identify properties that predict community responsiveness. Compared to posts in which informational support was not requested, posts soliciting informational support were more likely to use language reflecting efforts to make meaning from uncertainty related to a poster's ongoing illness experience. Among posts in which informational support was solicited, posts that discussed life-with-illness and used language indicating specific negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness yielded a greater number of responses from online community members.