External Information Sharing on Health Forums: An Exploration

Authors

  • Dana M. Nguyen University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Alexandra Olteanu Microsoft Research
  • Emre Kıcıman Microsoft Research

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7365

Abstract

Online health forums are an important avenue for receiving support and learning about fellow patients' experiences with similar diagnoses. We seek to characterize the external information shared (via web links) on health forums as a proxy to participants' information needs. For this purpose, using a dataset of web links shared publicly on a lung cancer forum over a period of 16 years, we perform a comparative analysis with three different website typologies, uncovering a diverse ecosystem of websites. We also examine typological variations as this forum gains and then loses popularity over time.

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Published

2020-05-26

How to Cite

Nguyen, D. M., Olteanu, A., & Kıcıman, E. (2020). External Information Sharing on Health Forums: An Exploration. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 14(1), 954-958. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7365