Social Roles in an Online Support Community for Older People

In this article, an online support community for older people is studied, with the aim developing a taxonomy of social roles based on content analysis and social network. Four hundred messages (posted between August 9, 2007, and February 5, 2008) in an online support community for older people (http: //www. seniornet. org) investigated. The data were analyzed to identify and shed light on patterns the online functional behavior as well as the social structure of active members. on the findings, a set of six social roles were identified, defined, and in depth. The findings showed that the structural positions of online community were associated with the kind of content these members tended post. For example, it was found that central members were very likely to give, whereas members not very well connected were more inclined to post -disclosing messages.