Social interactions in online eating disorder communities: A network perspective

PLoS One. 2018 Jul 30;13(7):e0200800. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200800. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Online health communities facilitate communication among people with health problems. Most prior studies focus on examining characteristics of these communities in sharing content, while limited work has explored social interactions between communities with different stances on a health problem. Here, we analyse a large communication network of individuals affected by eating disorders on Twitter and explore how communities of individuals with different stances on the disease interact online. Based on a large set of tweets posted by individuals who self-identify with eating disorders online, we establish the existence of two communities: a large community reinforcing disordered eating behaviours and a second, smaller community supporting efforts to recover from the disease. We find that individuals tend to mainly interact with others within the same community, with limited interactions across communities and inter-community interactions characterized by more negative emotions than intra-community interactions. Moreover, by studying the associations between individuals' behavioural characteristics and interpersonal connections in the communication network, we present the first large-scale investigation of social norms in online health communities, particularly on how a community approves of individuals' behaviours. Our findings shed new light on how people form online health communities and can have broad clinical implications on disease prevention and online intervention.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Communication*
  • Feeding and Eating Disorders / psychology*
  • Humans
  • Internet*
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Language
  • Public Health
  • Social Behavior
  • Social Media*
  • Social Support*

Grants and funding

This research is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (NO. ES/J500161/1), the Institute for Life Sciences, Web Science Institute and Social Science, University of Southampton, and The Alan Turing Institute. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.