School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Center for the Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Feb 15;19(4):2167. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19042167.
Disease-specific online health communities provide a convenient and common platform for patients to share experiences, change information, provide and receive social support. This study aimed to compare differences between online psychological and physiological disease communities in topics, sentiment, participation, and emotional contagion patterns using multiple methods as well as to discuss how to satisfy the users' different informational and emotional needs. We chose the online depression and diabetes communities on the Baidu Tieba platform as the data source. Topic modeling and theme coding were employed to analyze discussion preferences for various topic categories. Sentiment analysis was used to identify the sentiment polarity of each post and comment. The social network was used to represent the users' interaction and emotional flows to discover the differences in participation and emotional contagion patterns between psychological and physiological disease communities. The results revealed that people affected by depression focused more on their symptoms and social relationships, while people affected by diabetes were more likely to discuss treatment and self-management behavior. In the depression community, there were obvious interveners spreading positive emotions and more core users in the negative emotional contagion network. In the diabetes community, emotional contagion was less prevalent and core users in positive and negative emotional contagion networks were basically the same. The study reveals insights into the differences between online psychological and physiological disease communities, providing a greater understanding of the users' informational and emotional needs expressed online. These results are helpful for society to provide actual medical assistance and deploy health interventions based on disease types.
特定疾病的在线健康社区为患者提供了一个方便且常用的平台，用于分享经验、交流信息、提供和接受社会支持。本研究旨在通过多种方法比较在线心理和生理疾病社区在主题、情绪、参与度和情感传染模式方面的差异，并探讨如何满足用户不同的信息和情感需求。我们选择了百度贴吧平台上的在线抑郁症和糖尿病社区作为数据源。采用主题建模和主题编码来分析各种主题类别的讨论偏好。使用情感分析来确定每个帖子和评论的情绪极性。利用社交网络来表示用户的互动和情感流，以发现心理和生理疾病社区之间在参与度和情感传染模式方面的差异。研究结果表明，受抑郁症影响的人更关注自身症状和社会关系，而受糖尿病影响的人则更倾向于讨论治疗和自我管理行为。在抑郁症社区中，存在明显的干预者传播积极情绪，且在消极情绪传染网络中有更多的核心用户。在糖尿病社区中，情感传染则不太普遍，积极和消极情感传染网络中的核心用户基本相同。该研究揭示了在线心理和生理疾病社区之间的差异，进一步了解了用户在线表达的信息和情感需求。这些结果有助于社会根据疾病类型提供实际的医疗援助和部署健康干预措施。
