Abstract
Background: Social media has been shown to be a potentially beneficial tool for the well-being of individuals with chronic medical conditions. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how individuals identified Mild Acquired Cognitive Impairment (MACI) communicate through social media. MACI refers to a non-progressive mild cognitive impairment after an acquired brain injury.
Objective: The objectives of this study were to describe the content and to visualize the user involvement in a social media community aimed for people with brain fatigue, a common symptom for persons identified with MACI.
Methods: A content- and a social network analysis of the communication of 1092 individuals with brain fatigue, participating in a social media community, were performed. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data analysis.
Results: To acknowledge a “like” was the most common form of the studied communicative interactions. Social support (especially informational, but also emotional, and esteem support), and socialization in different forms, were common main themes in the posts and comments. A few individuals were found to be very involved while most of the others were poorly involved in the communication. The involvement followed a long tail distribution. The patterns of produced content themes, and the social media communication features used also varied among the members in the group.
Conclusion: This study indicates that a social media group could be a beneficial tool in MACI rehabilitation, because the participants, in varying ways and degrees, socialized and exchanged social support. Such information exchange has been shown to be beneficial in MACI rehabilitation. The results in this study could, in combination with further studies, be analyzed by relevant domain experts in different fields. This could be one step to fill the gap of knowledge on how individuals with MACI are communicating in social media groups.
