Vayreda-Antaki2009

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Vayreda-Antaki2009
BibType ARTICLE
Key Vayreda-Antaki2009
Author(s) Agnès Vayreda, Charles Antaki
Title Social support and unsolicited advice in a bipolar disorder online forum
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, bipolar disorder, communication, conversation analysis, education, online, Internet, language, medical/health care discourse, medicalization, research, online, social support
Publisher
Year 2009
Language English
City
Month
Journal Qualitative Health Research
Volume 19
Number 7
Pages 931–942
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1049732309338952
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

How does a newly diagnosed user get inducted into a forum dedicated to people suffering from bipolar disorder? Is their opening message “matched” by the forum’s reply? We add to the literature on social support online by using conversation analysis (CA) to explore an apparent contradiction between a new user’s first post and forum members’ replies with ostensibly unsolicited advice. CA reveals the intimate relation between turns in sequence, an aspect of online communication largely ignored in existing work on social support. Seen from this perspective, giving unsolicited advice, although apparently a “mismatch,” turns out to be a consequence of the open design of the new user’s initial posting. We speculate that such unsolicited advice might function at the ideological level to induct the new user into the mores of the group, not only in the kind of support it countenances giving, but into the very meaning of bipolarity itself.

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