Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Huh, Jina

Titel

Clinical Questions in Online Health Communities: The Case of "See your doctor" Threads

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 2015, p.1488-1499

Ort / Verlag

New York, NY, USA: ACM

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ACM Digital Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Online health communities are known to provide psychosocial support. However, concerns for misinformation being shared around clinical information persist. An existing practice addressing this concern includes monitoring and, as needed, discouraging asking clinical questions in the community. In this paper, I examine such practice where moderators redirected patients to see their health care providers instead of consulting the community. I observed that, contrary to common beliefs, community members provided constructive tips and persuaded the patients to see doctors rather than attempting to make a diagnosis or give medical advice. Moderators' posts on redirecting patients to see their providers were highly associated with no more follow up replies, potentially hindering active community dynamic. The findings showed what is previously thought of as a solution-quality control through moderation-might not be best and that the community, in coordination with moderators, can provide critical help in addressing clinical questions and building constructive information sharing community environment.