| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
|
|
Wellman (1997) succinctly offers a strong rationale for employing a social network perspective for analyzing interactions on the SOL-Cancer Forum by describing how it provides “procedures for detecting structural patterns, seeing how patterns of different types of relationships interrelate, analyzing the implications that structural patterns have for the behavior of network members, and studying the impact on social structures of the characteristics of network members and their social relationships” (p. 179). Social network analysis provides the best tools for this research because it does not aim to clarify how any particular individual uses an online forum but rather the characteristics and patterns of relationships that develop in an online forum, how they interrelate, and their influence on the transmission of social support.
The analytical benefits of applying a social network perspective can be found at a number of levels. Whether focusing on the analysis of a complete network or individual dyads, it is important to keep in mind that every smaller relation, such as a dyad or a triad, is both a unique entity and a component of a successive collection of actors, such as a subgroup or complete network (Wasserman & Galaskiewicz, 1994, p. xiii). Confining analysis to the level of a group that is defined as such a priori or to certain dyads in isolation imposes unnecessary limitations on the explanatory power of social structure. For example, viewing the members of an online forum as a social network rather than a group can enhance the analysis in a number of ways. Making a priori assumptions about the relations between forum members forfeits the ability to distinguish and analyze meaningful group relations from the larger collectivity, which is simply a group in name. As Wellman (1997) argues, “… a bunch of people who hang out together—at work, in a café, or on an Internet discussion group—can be studied as either a group or a social network.