Social Roles in an Online Support Community for Older People

In this article, an online support community for older people is studied, with the aim

of developing a taxonomy of social roles based on content analysis and social network

analysis. Four hundred messages (posted between August 9, 2007, and February 5,

2008) in an online support community for older people (http://www.seniornet.org)

were investigated. The data were analyzed to identify and shed light on patterns

of the online functional behavior as well as the social structure of active members.

Drawing on the findings, a set of six social roles were identified, defined, and

described in depth. The findings showed that the structural positions of online community

members were associated with the kind of content these members tended

to post. For example, it was found that central members were very likely to give

support, whereas members not very well connected were more inclined to post

self-disclosing messages.