Abstract
Online communities have become a tool for researchers to understand and help individuals with depression. According to their operation mode in terms of management, communities can be divided into management depression communities (MDCs) and lacking-management depression communities (LDCs). This study aimed to investigate the characteristics and impact of LDCs in comparison with MDCs. All postings from the previous year were collected from the LDC and MDC. Keywords were extracted and coded to identify the themes, and a text classifier was built to identify the type of emotions and social support expressed in the postings. Community members were then clustered to explore their different participation patterns. We found that in the LDC, the expression of negative emotions was the most popular theme, there was a lack of information about the treatment of depression and a lack of social support providers, the level of engagement of providers was low, and support seekers did not receive attention. These results reveal the need for community management and can be used to develop more effective measures to support members of online depression communities.
Highlights
Online communities provide convenient platforms for individuals to communicate with each other
We found that the negative posted themuch most and spent much time involved in the lacking-management depression communities (LDCs)
Our study provides new insights to explore how members use online depression communities
Summary
Online communities provide convenient platforms for individuals to communicate with each other. Users gather in online communities because of common interests, goals, or needs [1,2], and can include members with the same mental illness, such as depression. Depression is a mental illness affecting more than 350 million people in the world [3]. Only 25% of the global population with depression receive effective treatment [4]. The anonymity and openness of online communities can make people with depression more willing to seek information about mental health problems from those with the same disorder, as they may feel it is less risky to disclose their disorder to others online [5,6]. Online communities provide a platform for people with depression to communicate with others and seek information and suggestions, and to obtain and provide support
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