Social Support and Unsolicited Advice in a Bipolar Disorder Online Forum

Bibliographic Data

ID4701625
AuthorsAgnès Vayreda (0000-0003-0639-113X, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain), C Antaki (0000-0002-9473-4413, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom)
Year2009
Volume19
Issue7
Pages931-942
Publication date2009-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Health Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1049-7323 • E-ISSN: 1552-7557
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1049732309338952
PMID19556400
OpenAlexW2150262257
LanguageEN
Citations received63
References cited40

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

Contradiction · Conversation · Epistemology · Grice · Mores · Political science · Politics · Psychotherapist · Social media · World Wide Web · Communication · Computer Science · Digital Communication and Language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Stuttering Research and Treatment

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