Vlog Community Building for Social Support on YouTube: A Social Capital Perspective

초록

Video blogging (vlogging) on YouTube allows cancer patients to invite viewers into their lives through vivid and authentic storytelling. Compared to online communities that operate based on user-to-user interaction (e.g., online forums), vlog communities tend to feature interactions between a single vlogger and his or her multiple followers. The extent to which this interaction dyad allows a vlog community to thrive as a continual source of social support is underexplored. Considering community resource generation from a social capital perspective, we collected 48,233 comments from seven cancer vlog channels on YouTube to conduct machine-learning structural topic modeling. The results revealed diverse and nuanced social support, some of which was distinct from social support found on other online community platforms, including advocacy, affirmation, enactment, and religious sympathy. The data also indicated the evolution of certain types of social support; over the history of the vlog communities, enactment and reassurance support increased while informational support decreased. The findings suggest that vlog communities offer a significant source of social support for cancer patients and other populations.