Social support emerges as a complex of small and larger exchanges between people, trust in networks to provide services in time of need, and a generalized reciprocity in communities where resources are distributed more generally than in a strictly give-and-take fashion. Thus, friendship may be recognized by pairwise exchange of personal information and emotion, discussion of multiple topics, co-participation in events, frequent interaction, and the use of multiple media. This allows exploration of the types of interactions that create and define different kinds of relationships and communities. From an analytical perspective, one of the advantages of taking a social network perspective is that the focus is on what people do with each other rather than the medium or face-to-face context through which they do it. Media use is just one aspect of this complex structure, but it has the potential to set context, add to a social support system, and touch individuals and their closely tied friends and family. Her network episode model makes a connection between social context, social support, and illness careers and offers a way to address the complex whole that pertains to health and well-being. Her ideas respond to an increasing recognition of the impact of connectivity and experience: “The individual is seen as embedded in an ongoing relational dynamic with sequences of events seen as patterned, contingent and emergent” (p. Pescosolido has suggested that a network-centered view of health, based on social network principles, can act as a bridge between medical sciences and individual health experience. It is instead an approach that considers the unit of analysis to be the connections between people and looks at how these connections-social network “relations”-form patterns of interaction that reveal how information and other resources flow in a network, as well as the structures that define the network. This is not the same as “social networking”. Of the many ways to look at the range and effects of social media on interpersonal and collective relations, one that has proved useful for online communities has been a social network perspective. The following sections describe the analysis of the #hcsmca Twitter networks and then discuss these in relation to previous research on online communities. The first section below reviews the background on online social networks and describes the HCSMCA group. The group founder and participants that are identified as social media health care providers are prominent in posts and in attention from others, and the network is sustained by participation from and recognition of a core set of actors.
Results from the network analysis reveal a cohesive group consisting of one major component, including interaction across professional roles. This case includes network analyses of the group’s structures as shown through a sample of Twitter messages using the hashtag #hcsmca.
In this paper, we first discuss social networks and then illustrate the kind of information that can be revealed about community from a social network perspective through a case study of social media use by the group Health Care Social Media Canada (HCSMCA). Social network analysis provides a vocabulary and set of techniques for examining interaction patterns between people and has proven useful for studying health (eg, ), how relationships are maintained without physical co-presence, and the development of new, health care-related online networks. This perspective looks at group or community interactions to determine what kinds of actors and ties make up the network what exchange of information, social support, socializing, play, or other resources form the basis of the community and what roles and cliques emerge that provide structure to the community. Of the many approaches to community and online communication that have emerged, we highlight a social network perspective. This research provides a wealth of background theories, studies, and findings that inform the ways that a community is likely to form via newer social media and that can be applied to the development of health communities. These efforts can be enhanced by taking advantage of the research and experience already existing relating to online communication and community. This has stimulated growth in applying social media to matters of health and health communities: from work-based communities of practice to forums for patient social and information support (eg, ). The use of social media has spread dramatically in the past few years, demonstrated in increasing numbers of users, types of media, mobile applications, and connectivity.