Patients’ learning in cyberspace: a thematic analysis of patient-patient discussions in a chronic illness Facebook page.

Abstract

Objective: Online support groups play an increasingly important role in patients' lived experience of chronic illness. The objective of this study was to explore how learning takes place from patients' interactions in an online chronic illness support group.Methods: Qualitative data consisted of 1478 messages posted to a publicly accessible nonillness specific Facebook support page. Data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis.Findings: Four themes were identified from the analysis. This paper presents two themes, information sharing and dis(trust). Employing Wenger's Communities of Practice theoretical framework (Wenger, 1998), themes are discussed in terms of learning, participation in practices and identity. Conclusion:Online support groups can be pivotal to learning in illness. Patients' online information sharing provides them with opportunities for informal learning about their condition to take place. These online interactions lead to patients developing trust for one another and distrust for the medical care system.

Social representations of tourists' deviant behaviours: An analysis of Reddit comments

“…The data were analysed using thematic T A B L E 1 Subreddits and number of comments analysis. Thematic analysis is particularly useful in qualitative inquiries given its robust and nuanced interpretation of data (Braun & Clarke, 2006), especially when studying social media data (Stevens et al, 2018). An inductive coding process was utilised due to the dearth of research on the topic and to ensure critical information was not overlooked (Neeley & Dumas, 2016).…”