Open AccessSocial Medical Capital: How Patients and Caregivers Can Benefit From Online Social Interactions
Author(s) -
Pietro Panzarasa,
Chris Griffiths,
Nishanth Sastry,
Anna De Simoni
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
jmir. journal of medical internet research/journal of medical internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.446
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1439-4456
pISSN - 1438-8871
DOI - 10.2196/16337
Subject(s) - social capital , big data , social media , psychological intervention , social network (sociolinguistics) , online participation , internet privacy , data science , psychology , health care , scale (ratio) , analytics , social support , public relations , knowledge management , computer science , the internet , world wide web , sociology , social psychology , political science , psychiatry , social science , physics , quantum mechanics , law , operating system
The rapid growth of online health communities and the increasing availability of relational data from social media provide invaluable opportunities for using network science and big data analytics to better understand how patients and caregivers can benefit from online conversations. Here, we outline a new network-based theory of social medical capital that will open up new avenues for conducting large-scale network studies of online health communities and devising effective policy interventions aimed at improving patients’ self-care and health.