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External Information Sharing on Health Forums: An Exploration

Authors

Dana M. Nguyen,Alexandra Olteanu,Emre Kıcıman

University of California, Santa Barbara,Microsoft Research,Microsoft Research


Proceedings:

Vol. 14 (2020): Fourteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

Volume

Issue:

Vol. 14 (2020): Fourteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

Track:

Poster Papers

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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.

DOI:

10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7365


ICWSM

Vol. 14 (2020): Fourteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media