Does Social Support Expressed in Post Titles Elicit Comments in Online Substance Use Recovery Forums?
This work addresses engagement challenges in online recovery forums, but it is incremental as it compares two specific forums without broad generalizability.
The study analyzed how social support expressed in post titles relates to comment engagement in two Reddit substance recovery forums, finding that the types of support that elicit comments differ between forums.
Individuals recovering from substance use often seek social support (emotional and informational) on online recovery forums, where they can both write and comment on posts, expressing their struggles and successes. A common challenge in these forums is that certain posts (some of which may be support seeking) receive no comments. In this work, we use data from two Reddit substance recovery forums:/r/Leaves and/r/OpiatesRecovery, to determine the relationship between the social supports expressed in the titles of posts and the number of comments they receive. We show that the types of social support expressed in post titles that elicit comments vary from one substance use recovery forum to the other.