The Role of Communication Affordances in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Facebook and WhatsApp Support Groups

Daphna Yeshua-Katz
Additional contact information
Daphna Yeshua-Katz: Department of Communication Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: (1) Background: Digital health research has indicated that people with stigmatized health problems are drawn to online support groups (OSGs) because these groups help them to manage such conditions. However, little is known about how media affordances—interactions between the technology and the user—reconfigure the ways in which stigmatized individuals use OSGs and interact with others like themselves. (2) Method: The current study applied an affordance framework to evaluate how Facebook and WhatsApp support groups can help military veterans and their partners cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and was based on interviews with 34 PTSD-OSG members in Israel. (3) Findings: This research identified five affordances that members appraised as enhancing their coping efforts in the digital world: visibility, availability, multimediality, surveillance, and synchronicity. (4) Conclusions: This study reveals the connection between a specific stigmatized mental health disorder (i.e., PTSD) and perceptions of communication technologies (i.e., affordances), and specifies the uses of technologies for coping with this mental health disorder. Moreover, this study may inform digital intervention designers about which communication affordances can potentially lead to better health outcomes.

Keywords: stigma; social media; affordances; social support; post-traumatic stress disorder (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4576/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4576/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:9:p:4576-:d:543594

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().