Don’t You Know What Causes That? Advice, Celebration, and Justification in a Large Families Bulletin Board

Abstract

A thematic analysis of an on‐line bulletin board for parents of large families revealed three prominent patterns of talk related to advice seeking and giving, celebration of family, and justification of family size. This combination of discursive behaviors seem to be largely social supportive in nature and may have implications regarding the lack of face‐to‐face social support for large families and the potential importance of communication within on‐line groups for providing that support.

Keywords:

• Large Families
• Bulletin Boards
• Narratives
• Social Support
• Justification

Notes

[1] The bulletin board series, specific bulletin board, and all usernames have been altered to help protect the members of this community.

[2] The bulletin board discussed here exists in the public domain. The 1999 report of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Frankel & Siang, 1999), as well as other writings with regard to Internet research, suggests that several standards should be applied to assessing research with human subjects on the Internet. The standards include accessibility, perceived privacy, intrusiveness, vulnerability, and potential harm. In this case, the bulletin board studied was accessible to anyone with Internet access (no membership was required for viewing). When signing in to post, members saw an explicit warning that any information posted was public, so perceived privacy was not high (and members often made mention of this fact on the board). Intrusiveness of the study was negligible, because the researcher did not interact with board members. Finally, because the nature of the posts made on the board, and included in this report, was not highly sensitive, the vulnerability and potential harm to participants is extremely low.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorin Basden Arnold

Lorin Basden Arnold (Ph.D. Purdue University, 1996) is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Rowan University. Her area of focus is family communication. The author extends thanks to the many people who participated in the review and editorial process for this piece as it developed from NCA conference presentation to journal publication.