Blogging activity among cancer patients and their companions: Uses, gratifications, and predictors of outcomes

Authors:
Deborah S. Chung;Sujin Kim
Affiliations:
215 Grehan Building, School of Journalism and Telecommunications, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0042;School of Library and Information Science and Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506
Venue:
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year:
2008

Citing 3
Cited 7

Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs

HICSS '04 Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 4 - Volume 4
What Americans like about being online

Communications of the ACM - Bioinformatics
Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary?

CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work

Personal journal bloggers: Profiles of disclosiveness

Computers in Human Behavior
Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others

Computers in Human Behavior
Matters of life and death: locating the end of life in lifespan-oriented hci research

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The change in user and IT dynamics: Blogs as IT-enabled virtual self-presentation

Computers in Human Behavior
Mobile content contribution and retrieval: An exploratory study using the uses and gratifications paradigm

Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
Health vlogger-viewer interaction in chronic illness management

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Methodological Review: Health outcomes and related effects of using social media in chronic disease management: A literature review and analysis of affordances

Journal of Biomedical Informatics

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This study examines cancer patients' and companions' uses and gratifications of blogs and the relationship between different types of blogging activities and gratification outcomes. In an online survey of 113 respondents, cancer patients were found to be more likely than their companions to host their own blogs. Four areas emerged as gratifications of blog use: prevention and care, problem-solving, emotion management, and information-sharing. Cancer patients and companions both found blogging activity to be most helpful for emotion management and information-sharing. Further, cancer patients were more gratified than their companions in the areas of emotion management and problem-solving. Regression analyses indicate that perceived credibility of blogs, posting comments on others' blogs, and hosting one's own blog significantly increased the explanatory power of the regression models for each gratification outcome. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.