Shan Jiang Ph D Assistant Professor Department of

Shan Jiang, Ph. D. Assistant Professor Department of Management Science and Information Systems University of Massachusetts Boston

Background Research Gaps and Questions Method Implications • Online Healthcare Community (OHC) • Social Support 1 min • What we already know • What we don’t know 1 min • Linguistic Profiling based on LIWC 2 min • Potential Contributions 1 min

INTRO GAP METHOD §Web forum, chat rooms, 1 -on-1 support §Informational Support vs Emotional Support IMPLICATION

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION §Sample posts in Daily. Strength Message length? Topic? Wording? many replies 0 replies

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION §Social Network Features § + Core-Periphery Structure (Introne et al. 2016; 2019) § + Centralities (Bambina 2007) § + Structural Hole (Burt 1994; Jiang et al. 2019) §Linguistic Features (limited studies in OHC context) Readability, - message length (Johnson et al. 2015; Chen et al. 2020) § + Negative Sentiment (Eslami et al. 2018; Siering et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2020) §+ § Negativity Bias (Baumester 2001)

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION Theoretical Levels of Linguistic Analysis (Clark et al. 2010) Syntactic (e. g. , length, readability) Semantic (e. g. , sentiment) Lexical (e. g. , health vocabulary richness) Pragmatic (e. g. , shared language) Are anti-viral drugs effective for COVID 19? vs Are drugs effective for COVID-19? Have we flatten the curve? vs Has the number of infected decreased to a controllable level? § (Selected) Research Questions § Does the use of health language help patients receive more social support? § Does the use of contextually matching language help patients receive more social support?

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION § LIWC – Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (Pennebaker et al. 2007)

INTRO GAP § LIWC – Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (Pennebaker et al. 2007) § Words pre-classified into over 30 psychological process categories § Most relevant categories in OHC context METHOD IMPLICATION

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION § Statistically test whether a certain pattern is more likely to develop than random chance Examples of Research Hypotheses Transformed as Network Patterns

INTRO GAP METHOD IMPLICATION § Provide (linguistic) tips to patients in need § Under-represented groups (e. g. , new users, calm/optimistic users)

? § Shan. Jiang@umb. edu