Work

Does sustained participation in an online health community affect sentiment?

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: A large number of patients rely on online health communities to exchange information and psychosocial support with their peers. Examining participation in a community and its impact on members' behaviors and attitudes is one of the key open research questions in the field of study of online health communities. In this paper, we focus on a large public breast cancer community and conduct sentiment analysis on all its posts. We investigate the impact of different factors on post sentiment, such as time since joining the community, posting activity, age of members, and cancer stage of members. We find that there is a significant increase in sentiment of posts through time, with different patterns of sentiment trends for initial posts in threads and reply posts. Factors each play a role; for instance stage-IV members form a particular sub-community with patterns of sentiment and usage distinct from others members.

Source: PubMed Central

Authors: Shaodian Zhang, Erin Bantum, Jason Owen, Noémie Elhadad

Institutions: Columbia University, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Language: English

Topic: Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Cancer Institute

Award: USE OF NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING TO IDENTIFY LINGUISTIC MARKERS OF COPING