Conference Paper

Losing It Online: Characterizing Participation in an Online Weight Loss Community

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Association for Computing Machinery

Abstract

Many people struggle with their weight and are turning to online communities for social and informational support. The aim of this study is to understand the issues commonly discussed in online weight loss communities. Through observation and content analysis of threads in one specific weight loss community, we identified 17 distinct categories discussed by the participants. We detail four categories specifically: Personal Experience, Consumption Choices, Dieting Strategy, and Exercise. Our analysis describes some key user roles and states that often relate to different phases of a person's weight loss journey. We identify a set of transient states, which are not proper roles but are significant in an online community where individuals are attempting to change their own behaviors. We close with design suggestions for encouraging and maintaining participant engagement in an online health community

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Li, Victor; McDonald, David W.; Eikey, Elizabeth V.; Sweeney, Jessica; Escajeda, Janessa; Dubey, Guarav; Riley, Kaitlin; Poole, Erika S.; Hekler, Eric B. (2014): Losing It Online: Characterizing Participation in an Online Weight Loss Community. Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work. DOI: 10.1145/2660398.2660416. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 35–45. Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

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weight loss, online community, content analysis

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Number of citations to item: 19

  • Albert Park, Andrea L Hartzler, Jina Huh, Gary Hsieh, David W McDonald, Wanda Pratt (2016): “How Did We Get Here?”: Topic Drift in Online Health Discussions, In: Journal of Medical Internet Research 11(18), doi:10.2196/jmir.6297
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  • Cidila Da Moura Semedo, Peter A Bath, Ziqi Zhang (2023): Social Support in a Diabetes Online Community: Mixed Methods Content Analysis, In: JMIR Diabetes, doi:10.2196/41320
  • Eric B Hekler, Gaurav Dubey, David W McDonald, Erika S Poole, Victor Li, Elizabeth Eikey (2014): Exploring the Relationship Between Changes in Weight and Utterances in an Online Weight Loss Forum: A Content and Correlational Analysis Study, In: Journal of Medical Internet Research 12(16), doi:10.2196/jmir.3735
  • Kathleen Ryan, Conor Linehan, Samantha Dockray (2021): Appropriation of Digital Tracking Tools in an Online Weight Loss Community: Individual and Shared Experiences, In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021, doi:10.1145/3461778.3462092
  • Kathryn E. Ringland (2019): “Autsome”: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15742-5_12
  • Amanda Lazar, Emma E. Dixon (2019): Safe Enough to Share, In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction CSCW(3), doi:10.1145/3359187
  • Chia-Fang Chung, Elena Agapie, Jessica Schroeder, Sonali Mishra, James Fogarty, Sean A. Munson (2017): When Personal Tracking Becomes Social, In: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, doi:10.1145/3025453.3025747
  • Jihyeon Kim, Uran Oh (2019): EmoWei : Emotion-Oriented Personalized Weight Management System Based on Sentiment Analysis, In: 2019 IEEE 20th International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration for Data Science (IRI), doi:10.1109/iri.2019.00060
  • Kristina Feldvari, Anita Dremel, Snježana Stanarević Katavić (2020): Virtual Fitness Community: Online Behavior on a Croatian Fitness Forum, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-49570-1_32
  • Xi Lu, Yunan Chen, Daniel A. Epstein (2021): A Model of Socially Sustained Self-Tracking for Food and Diet, In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction CSCW2(5), doi:10.1145/3479595
  • Katrina J Serrano, Mandi Yu, Kisha I Coa, Linda M Collins, Audie A Atienza (2016): Mining Health App Data to Find More and Less Successful Weight Loss Subgroups, In: Journal of Medical Internet Research 6(18), doi:10.2196/jmir.5473
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