Network Structure of an AIDS-Denialist Online Community: Identifying Core Members and the Risk Group

Rykov, Yuri Germanovich; Meylakhs, Peter; Sinyavskaya, Yadviga

doi:10.1177/0002764217717565

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Since paternalistic model does not include much explanation and communication, patients tend to fortify their opinions and decisions with information from Internet sites, forums, blogs and channels. On the basis of this information, they can make decisions to refuse medical manipulations, vaccination, drug intake or deny the disease [43]. Besides, some medical professionals are aware of the interconnections between patients' trust and their compliance.…”

Section: Institutional Arrangement and Change Of Maternity Care In Rumentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Medical Settings: Invisible Suffering of Doctors

2019

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While there is a substantive amount of literature on vulnerability of different kinds of patients in different settings, medical professionals are usually considered as the ones who possess power and gain a privileged position. In this paper, we aim to demonstrate that in a certain context physicians—a social group which is usually referred to as “powerful”—consider themselves vulnerable, and this positioning may influence patients in turn. This perspective highlights the complexity of interactions within medical organizations and contributes to the studies of sensitive topics and vulnerable groups. We conceptualize vulnerability of doctors and discuss what can be problematic in powerful doctors’ position. We describe some features of the post-Soviet context of Russian healthcare system and maternity care, both of which can be conceptualized as a hybrid of legacy of Soviet paternalism and new neoliberal reforms, managerialism and marketization. Empirical research is based on the ethnographic evidence from the study of a Russian perinatal center. In this article, we explore specific “existential” and “moral” vulnerabilities of medical professionals who routinely have to cope with multiple challenges, such as complicated clinical tasks, rigid control of different state bodies and emotional responses of suffering patients. We argue that there is a bond between the vulnerability of doctors and that of patients, whose position becomes more problematic as professionals become more vulnerable. At the end, we discuss methodological and theoretical implications of our research.

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Section: Institutional Arrangement and Change Of Maternity Care In Rumentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Medical Settings: Invisible Suffering of Doctors

2019

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“…However, since empowerment can also be dysfunctional [5], this implies that collective empowerment can also be channeled toward unproductive or even damaging goals. Problematic collective behaviors can be evident, for example, in OHCs related to the antivaccination movement [78], proanorexia groups [79], or AIDS-denialist groups [34]. This implies that, when measuring collective empowerment, we should also consider measuring other variables pertaining to the goals of empowerment and other important predictors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The bottom-up collective engagement that OHCs facilitate addresses topics that include access to or provision of health care services, health inequality, disease prevention and illness advocacy, health care reform, patients’ rights, and power relationships in the health care arena. Moreover, OHCs often function as platforms for discussion and exchange of information related to the accessibility of remedies and medical treatments; access to health care services and health care professionals; misconceptions of specific, often stigmatized illnesses such as AIDS/HIV, infertility, and mental disorders; and other disease-related issues that often pertain to the disadvantaged social positions of specific patient groups [33,34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation

Atanasova¹,

Petrič²

2019

J Med Internet Res

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BackgroundThe role of online health communities (OHCs) in patient empowerment is growing and has been increasingly studied in recent years. Research has focused primarily on individualistic conception of patients’ empowerment, with much less attention paid to the role of OHCs in the development of patients’ collective empowerment. Although OHCs have immense potential for empowerment that goes beyond the individual, the concept and scale of collective empowerment in OHCs have not yet been developed or validated.ObjectiveThis study aimed to develop an instrument for measuring collective empowerment in online health communities (CE-OHC) and to test its quality by investigating its factorial structure, reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity.MethodsThe CE-OHC scale was developed according to a strict methodology for developing valid and reliable scales. An initial set of 20 items was first tested in the pilot study conducted in 2016 using a sample of 280 registered users of Slovenia’s largest OHC. A refined version with 11 items was tested in the main study conducted in 2018 on a random sample of 30,000 registered users of the same OHC. The final sample comprised 784 users. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to investigate the factorial structure, discriminant validity, and convergent validity of the scale. Cronbach alpha coefficient was used to determine the CE-OHC scale’s internal consistency. To establish the predictive validity, ordinary least squares regression was performed to test the role of CE-OHC in users’ civic participation.ResultsThe EFA resulted in a two-factor solution, and the two factors—knowledge of resources and resource mobilization for collective action—together explain 63.8% of the variance. The second-order CFA demonstrated a good fit to the data (root mean square error of approximation=0.07) and the scale had a good internal consistency (alpha=.86). Although evidence of the scale’s convergent validity was partially provided, discriminant validity of the scale remained unconfirmed. Overall, CE-OHC was confirmed to be a predictor of users’ civic participation, but the influence was somewhat weak and inconsistent across two subscales.ConclusionsThe proposed CE-OHC scale is a reliable and relatively valid instrument and serves as a good baseline to advance the measurement of collective empowerment in OHC contexts. This is the first scale developed for this purpose, and future research should focus on the development of a clear nomological network of the collective empowerment construct in relation to the OHC settings.

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“…Formally, being a member of an online group and forming friendships with its members are two distinct types of online behavior. However, there is a substantial body of literature exploring network structures of different types of online groups including online forums [67], social news sites [68], twitter #hashtag communities [69,70], Facebook groups [71], and VK groups [72][73][74]. These studies demonstrate that although these platforms have different network patterns [75], dense and tightly connected clusters of friendship are usually formed in most online groups.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of user behaviors on accumulation of social capital in an online social network

2020

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The use of social network sites helps people to make and maintain social ties accumulating social capital, which is increasingly important for individual success. There is a wide variation in the amount and structure of online ties, and to some extent this variation is contingent on specific online user behaviors which are to date under-researched. In this work, we examine an entire city-bounded friendship network (N = 194,601) extracted from VK social network site to explore how specific online user behaviors are related to structural social capital in a network of geographically proximate ties. Social network analysis was used to evaluate individual social capital as a network asset, and multiple regression analysis-to determine and estimate the effects of online user behaviors on social capital. The analysis reveals that the graph is both clustered and highly centralized which suggests the presence of a hierarchical structure: a set of sub-communities united by city-level hubs. Against this background, membership in more online groups is positively associated with user's brokerage in the location-bounded network. Additionally, the share of local friends, the number of received likes and the duration of SNS use are associated with social capital indicators. This contributes to the literature on the formation of online social capital, examined at the level of a large and geographically localized population.

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Network Structure of an AIDS-Denialist Online Community: Identifying Core Members and the Risk Group

Cited by 17 publications

References 51 publications

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Medical Settings: Invisible Suffering of Doctors

Multiple Vulnerabilities in Medical Settings: Invisible Suffering of Doctors

Collective Empowerment in Online Health Communities: Scale Development and Empirical Validation

Effects of user behaviors on accumulation of social capital in an online social network

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