Abstract:
When it comes to health-related information-seeking behavior, online communities play a key role for some groups, such as parents. With a case study of online communities in a loosely organized vaccination system, that of Austria, we study how parents make use of a prominent online forum (parents.at) in their vaccination trajectories and situate this analysis in its socio-political context. Based on inductive qualitative analysis of relevant threads (n = 27), we find that parents use forums in three ways: First, the forum serves as a platform through which parents seek orientation in a loosely organized and fragmented vaccination system. Second, the forum offers space for sharing, collecting, and evaluating different forms of expertise. In doing so, parents carve out a space in which they can comfortably put lay expertise and credentialed expertise on a par, particularly in their advice to peers. Third, and on that basis, parents use the forum for deliberating on future or past vaccination-related decisions. In doing so, they frequently draw on idiosyncratic notions of individual risks and benefits. These three practices enable parents to accumulate and share what we label navigational capital. We conclude that parents resort to online spaces both out of a subjective need and, for some, as a result of a dysfunction of the national childhood vaccination program which offers little orientation for parents.
摘要:
当涉及到健康相关的信息寻求行为时,在线社区对一些群体起着关键作用,如父母。以松散组织的疫苗接种系统中的在线社区为例,奥地利的,我们研究父母如何利用一个著名的在线论坛(父母。at)在其疫苗接种轨迹中,并将此分析置于其社会政治背景中。基于相关线索的归纳定性分析(n=27),我们发现父母通过三种方式使用论坛:第一,该论坛是一个平台,父母可以通过该平台在组织松散和分散的疫苗接种系统中寻求指导。第二,论坛提供了分享的空间,收集,评估不同形式的专业知识。在这样做的时候,父母们开辟了一个空间,让他们可以舒适地将专业知识和有资质的专业知识放在一起,特别是在他们给同龄人的建议中。第三,在此基础上,父母使用该论坛审议未来或过去与疫苗接种相关的决定。在这样做的时候,他们经常借鉴个人风险和收益的特殊概念。这三种做法使父母能够积累和分享我们标记的导航资本。我们得出的结论是,父母出于主观需要而诉诸网络空间,对一些人来说,由于国家儿童疫苗接种计划的功能障碍,该计划为父母提供了很少的指导。