Online health support groups (OHSGs) offer opportunities for people with various health conditions to gain support and associated physical and mental health benefits, however evidence suggests that those who choose to lurk in OHSGs may be less likely to accrue benefits (e.g. empowering outcomes) than those who actively contribute. Most research to date has focused on comparing the outcomes of OSHG engagement for lurkers and participators, yet there has been little research which has considered how the different reasons for lurking might be associated with levels of participation and empowering processes. In this investigation we used a survey to gather data from 237 participants to develop a new scale to measure factors influencing the Propensity for Online Community Contribution (POCCS), and to explore the relationship between these factors and OHSG engagement behaviour and empowering processes accrued from OHSG use. The POCCS comprised nine 2 factors, 1) poor sense of community; 2) struggles with self-expression; 3) inhibited disclosure and privacy; 4) negative online interactions; 5) ease of access and use; 6) health preventing contribution; 7) delayed and selective contribution; 8) goals met without contribution; and 9) lack of time. Five of these factors (1, 3, 6, 7, and 8) significantly predicted OHSG contribution and positive experiences in the form of empowering processes. Findings advocate a more nuanced approach to OHSG engagement, rather than a simple lurking/engaging dichotomy, and may enhance understanding of the relationship between OHSG use and perceived benefits.

Using video recounts from revenge porn victims, this study explores whether levels of victim blaming differs for the sharing of self- and stealth-taken sexually explicit images and videos. Building on previous work which has demonstrated victim blame for both self- and stealth generated images in occurrences of revenge porn (Zvi & Schechory-Bitton, 2020), the reported study presents an original and ecologically valid methodological approach whereby 342 (76 male, 266 female) participants (Mage = 39.27, SD = 11.70) from the UK watched videoed accounts of real experiences of falling victim to revenge porn, rather than using text based, often fictional, vignettes to attribute blame which dominate studies in this area. All data was collected in 2019. The results demonstrated that significantly more blame was assigned to victims when participants were indirectly rather than directly asked who was to blame for the occurrence of revenge porn, supporting the notion of an unconscious processing bias in attributing blame. More blame was also assigned to those victims who themselves generated the material compared to when it had been acquired without their awareness by a perpetrator, suggesting the cognitive bias to be in line with a just world hypothesis. Male participants were more likely to blame a victim than were female participants, although sex of victim and mode of shared sexually-explicit material (video or image) did not appear to affect levels of victim-blame. Findings are considered in terms of extant research and the need for future work in the area of victim blame and revenge pornography.

Online self-presentation assumes that individuals intentionally control how others perceive them based on their online behaviors. Existing tools are limited in their ability to measure this notion of perception control and there is little understanding around factors which may affect the desire for perception control. This article reports on the development of a perception control scale and comparisons of perception control across age and between genders. A total of 222 participants completed an online survey with items measuring perception control and participant demographics. A principal component analysis revealed a one-factor, 12-item scale explaining 41.14% of the variance. Perception control was found to increase with age and did not differ between genders. Results are consistent with existing impression management research suggesting that while participants of both genders desire to control how others perceive them, as a person's sense of self stabilizes over time, they are less motivated to change their behaviors to control others' impressions of them.

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