Post by G. Scott Russ (Brown) & Christopher Barnes (Yellow)
For our post this week, we entered the alt.parents-teens newsgroup on Usenet via the Google Groups browser. As the name may suggest, this is a group where parents and teenagers alike go for advice on their relationships with each other. We evaluated two of the conversations from this group, the first was a teenager asking for advice and the second was a question from a parent. Our analysis discarded all messages from the original poster, focusing only on those posted by other users in response.
Combining all 20 posts from both threads gave us these final statistics (findings from Braithwaite in parentheses):
Inter-rater reliability: 83.3%
Information: 19/95% (31.7%)
Tangible Assistance: 0/0% (2.7%)
Esteem Support: 10/50% (18.6%)
Network Support: 0/0% (7.1%)
Emotional Support: 6/30% (40%)
Humor: 0/0% (n/a)
The inter-rater reliability is fairly high, indicating a good level of correlation between our two assessments of the message. This allows us to be fairly confident in the validity and consistency of our results.
Our data roughly follow the same patterns published by Braithwaite, with some notable discrepancies. We feel that these differences arise from the two distinct natures of the analyzed groups. Braithwaite studied support groups for people with disabilities, a group much more centered around empathy and healing. The parent group that we studied was significantly more information-focused; members participated to get clear and specific tips on their own situations, and not to be supported or comforted in general. We noted the same lack of tangible assistance offers and of network support. These message types are much more “higher cost” and therefore their rarity would certainly be expected.
For the most part, posters were (presumably) anonymous to each other. Even when people chose not to use pseudonyms, physical distance likely put them outside of each other’s personal space. However, judging by past posts on the group, there were a number of repeat posters that had sufficient connection to the community to form a viable in-group dynamic.
If you browsed through the links that we provided at the beginning, you may have noticed that amongst this group of “regulars,” one person stood out in particular: R. Steve Walz. In the first thread, his messages were not really directed at the original poster, but at one of the other group members. Considering his actions under the Douglas and McGarty’s model of inter-group dynamics, we can conclude with certainty that his individual identity was salient and that he was identifiable to the group. Since we are considering the in-group here, the identity of “dragonlady,” the target of Walz’s diatribe, was certainly known to him as well. Considering these things, Walz’s non-normative behavior was truly curious. Coupled with his often outlandish propositions, his personality was a true anomaly when set against the otherwise calm and “father-like” demeanor of the group.
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2 comments:
Great Post! First and foremost I completely agree with you when you make mention of the fact that discrepancies in support types are most likely due to the different purposes of the groups. You state, “Braithwaite studied support groups for people with disabilities, a group much more centered around empathy and healing”. When completing this assignment, I found that to be the most obvious factor. It is clear that people offer different means of support depending on the issue at hand. I think Braithwaite opens the door for research pertaining to what kind of support is most likely to be provided in different situations. Good job!
Very good post. I like your analysis of how the different groups might show different results of focus for the five coding categories. This is especially true for anyone like my group who used more than one website with different helping focuses. I also like how you found an example from both sides of your conversation by having a teenager and a parent seeking help, which should bring a great deal of balance to your results. I'm very surprised that you didn't find any humor, I would think that this topic could be light hearted enough sometimes where a joke would be appropriate. You did a very good job of explaining your results in comparison to Braithwaite's results for her study. It was also very good of you to mention Mr.Waltz and his weird behavior. Often you run into things that don't support even the well proven theories online. Keep up the good work.
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