The Reality of Virtual Social Support

1. The Reality of Virtual Social Support • the risky and uncertain conditions of modern life often call on us to sort out many of our problems ourselves, without the help of institutions, and even to help others to do the same – James Slevin • as communication technology, biotechnology, transgender networking, and networks of individuals, develop in parallel, as key elements of social practice, they are interacting, and influencing each other. Thus the Internet is becoming a very instrumental tool of management of new forms of life, including the building of on-line communities of support and collective leaning – Manuel Castells

2. Health and Social Support • People who display a high degree of social participation and/or have good social and community relationship tend, ceteris paribus, to have better physical and mental health. • Processes of Reflexive Modernization and Developments in ICTs are developing a profound elective affinity which have many consequences… • One consequence is that how we both experience and provide social support is changing… • Ironically, although rapid technological change is often conceptualised as one of the major forces invoking stress and isolation it is also, paradoxically, one of the means by which new forms of social connection and support will emerge.

3. The Study • Analyses of on-line interactions from newsgroups, discussion lists, IRC, websites which all claim to offer various forms of self-help and/or social support • Interviews with originators, contributors and users of virtual social support • Interviews and structured interactions with a range of health and welfare professionals • Here we concentrate on qualitative interviews with 51 users of different forms of virtual social support

4. Conceptualising Social Support • the companionship and practical, informational and esteem support which the individual derives from interaction with members of his or her “social network” – Cooper et al. (1999) • Social Companionship • Informational Support • Esteem Support • Instrumental Support

5. Emergence of Virtual Social Support • We cannot imagine America without its self-help groups. And, we cannot imagine an America that is not in love with technology. Cyberspace and the recovery movement were meant for each other – Norman Denzin • But now…Glocalization • Analyses of: alcohol dependency; depression; diabetes; disability; mortgage repossession; and parenting. • Examples of all except instrumental support

6. Companionship Support • In many ways I have more of virtual life than a real life. I'm not able to get out of the house sort of as much as I would like and it means that I can sort of have a life within rather than without. • The Internet has been and is a lifesaver for me. I don't have that much real life anymore in some ways, but I have a great virtual life.

7. Companionship Support • I suppose...being blind, it's easier thanmeeting real people. You're not always addressing, you know, if you go out, I don't know say you go to a pub or whatever there's always somebody coming over and patting your guide dog and wants to talk about the dog or wants to talk about you being blind or wants to talk about how you got there and how you find the buses and this sort of thing. On the Internet you don't get that, people don't know about you so you can talk about what you want to talk about. You're not constantly trying turn the conversation round your way or whatever

8. Informational Support • I run [the web site] which gives information and personal advice to parents and children... I often do research, for instance when a parent says his child is being put on an individual education plan, and I need to download all the info from the relevant government site, so that I give up to date replies, sometimes I also download OFSTED reports on a particular school to see if anything there will help a particular parent. I try to keep up with new sites on bullying. For instance, there is an excellent group ...dealing with homophobic bullying and young people and I have referred people there as they have more experience of that aspect than I have. A surprising number of adults also contact me about their school bullying ordeals and so do adults who are currently being bullied at work. Bullying at work is not my forte so I refer those people to another first class site...I also regularly use the government education pages which are excellent to research latest guidelines.

9. Esteem Support • I mean that’s one of the advantages for bereavement is that people, people want to contact you but they don’t know how to. You know when people have phoned me up and said ‘oh I’m ever so sorry to hear...’ and I said, and all you can say is, ‘well thank you’ and where do you go from there. Whereas the e-mails that I’ve received, and I’ve kept them, I’ve printed them all off and kept them, you know for the future. They have been wonderful because people have been able to say things that they really feel that perhaps they wouldn’t say in a conversation. People, people I think as a nation, the British are quite reserved aren’t we and we don’t say; oh you know ‘I’m sending you all my love and I, I really feel you know I’m here, blah, blah, blah.’ Whereas in an e-mail people were able to express exactly what they felt without embarrassment, or, or fear of saying the wrong thing if you like and that also made me feel a lot better as well because the love and support that I got from people that way was a lot better than anything else I could have had. Only very close family that were picking up the phone, other people obviously find it difficult so without those e-mails I’d have felt you know pretty isolated.

10. Support, Narrative, Biographical Reconstruction • I’ve found writing the e-mails has been almost cathartic to me because I’ve been able to express my feelings, I wish I wrote a diary or a journal but I don’t, so perhaps the e-mails have, have become if you like my journal. I’ve been telling other people what’s been happening because obviously over the past three weeks a lot has happened from losing the baby to the various other stages that I’ve had to go through and tests and you know and a funeral...I’ve been able to, every couple of days, put it all together and e-mail and send it to the various people, rather than writing a journal, so this has become my journal I suppose... I’ve actually now sort of kind of created a folder and kept all of the e- mails about this subject - to and from - in that folder and then sort of in the future I suppose I will just wrap that up and keep it, take it, take it off the machine, but I will keep it again for sentimentality perhaps when I look back on this episode in my life so that I can see what’s been happening.

11. Outputs • Burrows, R., Loader, B., Pleace, N., Nettleton, S. and Muncer, S. (2000) ‘Virtual Community Care? Social Policy and the Emergence of Computer Mediated Social Support’ Information, Communication and Society, 3, 1. • Burrows, R. and Nettleton, S. (2000) ‘Reflexive Modernization and the Emergence of Wired Self Help’ in K.Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar (eds) Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace, New York: Cambridge University. • Muncer, S.; Burrows, R.; Pleace, N.; Loader, B. and Nettleton, S. (2000) ‘Births, deaths, sex and marriage..but very few presents? A case study of social support in cyberspace’ Critical Public Health, Vol. 10, No. 1.