How Do Online Communities of Patients Aggregate on Twitter? An Affordance Perspective

Roberta Bernardi

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Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the key affordances influencing patients’ engagement with online communities on Twitter. Drawing on a socio-technical perspective of affordances, the paper presents the qualitative analysis of a sample of tweets from a patients’ community chat on Twitter. The paper makes the following contributions. First, it draws on the concept of composite affordances to show the influence of affordance relationships on patients’ engagement with online communities on Twitter. Second, it extends our knowledge about the implications of the attributes of Twitter digital objects for the realization of affordances that influence engagement in patients’ online communities. The paper furthers our understanding of the main factors that influence aggregation and interaction within communities of patients on Twitter.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Thirty Seventh International Conference on Information Systems
Subtitle of host publication2016 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2016), December 11-14, 2016
Publication statusPublished - 11 Dec 2016
Event International Conference on Information Systems 2016 (ICIS 2016) - Dublin, Ireland
Duration: 11 Dec 201614 Dec 2016

Conference

Conference International Conference on Information Systems 2016 (ICIS 2016)
Country/TerritoryIreland
CityDublin
Period11/12/1614/12/16

Keywords

  • Online communities
  • Healthcare
  • Affordances
  • Digital objects
  • Twitter

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