Social interactions in online eating disorder communities: A network perspective.

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 ind

SUBMITTER: Wang T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6066201 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature