Saurin Sanghvi (Red)
Considering the theme of the class, and after learning about that man who was addicted to second life, we decided to make computer addiction our google group topic. We were able to find two separate threads about computer addiction. The first thread started with a woman who found her boyfriend was addicted to the computer and was not making enough time for their relationship. Several people responded, some in support and others explaining why he could possibly be on the computer so often. Our second thread started with a person that claimed fewer people are addicted to computers than people who are addicted to drugs. Most group members responded by disagreeing with the author’s message and contended that there are many people today addicted to computers.
The summary of our findings is listed below:
Our findings were somewhat different than Braithwaite. Whereas Braithwaite found in his study of support groups for the disabled that most messages were coded emotional (40%), informational (31%) and esteem (18 %) our messages were mainly informational with few coded as esteem or emotional. One reason our messages were coded less for emotional and esteem support is that many respondents were disagreeing with the original author. In the first thread, many of the responses to the woman with the computer addicted boyfriend were that he was not addicted, it is just their relationship or that his actions were normal and she was incorrect. This type of response does not provided emotional support because they are not supporting or sympathizing with her. Nor is there esteem support because they are not complimenting or validating her. The same type of responses occurred in thread 2 when many respondents disagreed about computer addiction.
Another reason for this difference is mostly likely the topic of the support groups. Braithwaite explains “information support is most useful and prominent when the recipient can control the situation and put the information to use. Perhaps it was because heath problems and disabilities are not fully under the control of the members of the Support Network that emotional support was so prominent.” For our topic of computer addiction, this is something that people can control. Not to mention, many do not consider it a real addiction. As Braithwaite explained, disabilities cannot be controlled and that could be why emotional support was used often in his study.
There were also similarities in our studies. Braithwaite “found humor to be a staple.” We also found humor to be present in many of our messages, especially sarcastic humor. Braithwaite also explained that on overall messages the two coders agreed approximately 80% of the time. Out inter-rater reliability was .825. Our major points of contention were emotional support. We had a difficult time agreeing on what constituted emotional support; especially with the constant sarcasm in the messages. Braithwaite’s study was similar in that the coders only agreed 55% of the time on emotional support messages. Similar to our study, Braithwaite explained that coders found the category to be too broad.
After comparing our findings to Braithwaite, we also Walter’s four dimension of attraction to online social support. The dimensions are social distance, anonymity, interaction management and access. Social distance is appreciation of the greater expertise available in the online network. This feature was apparent in our first thread where the woman explained she turned to the group for help and plans to print their responses to show to her boyfriend about his computer addiction. Anonymity was questionable in our study. Many of the members had fake names such as Sea Wasp, yet others used what appeared to be real names such as Erik Francis. It is difficult to tell if this name is the person’s true identity. Interaction management is the ability to craft messages carefully and read at their own convenience. This was apparent especially in the longer messages with lots of information. It was clear the respondent had to look up certain facts in order to craft such detailed message. Finally access was extremely relevant considering some messages were posted at 3 am, clearly not following the normal daily schedule.
Thread 1:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.depression/browse_thread/thread/abcd0ab423db8a6d
Thread 2: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.science/browse_thread/thread/e204d0f3a2bca138/2d7948842972a63c?lnk=st&q=addicted+warcraft#2d7948842972a63c
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.depression/browse_thread/thread/abcd0ab423db8a6d
Thread 2: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.science/browse_thread/thread/e204d0f3a2bca138/2d7948842972a63c?lnk=st&q=addicted+warcraft#2d7948842972a63c
2 comments:
Hey Katelyn and Saurin,
I enjoyed reading your post and found your results to be very similar to my own. I liked how you quoted Braithwaite when he noted that the motivation of a post had something to do with the post. I really think one of the determining factors on how this type of experiment turns out is the subject matter of the original post. Whether or not the person is in control of the situation has to have a tremendous effect on how people react to it. In the situation you coded for, it seems as though the people involved had control over their “computer addiction”, so they did not get as much sympathy and therefore not as much emotional support. Instead, these people got reasons why people disagreed with them or ways to change what was happening, or informational support. This seemed to be the case in your experiment.
I love how you decided to investigate support for internet addiction, since we are starting to cover that in class. Our group also found the emotional support categorization too broad. Most of the time, we went with our gut feeling, but it isn't very well-defined. It's interesting that you found humor. His original post seemed to be a genuine request for information, but the sarcastic responses suggest otherwise. Why isn't he taken seriously?
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