Surviving Online: An Analysis of How Burn Survivors Recover from Life Crises

Abstract

This study is a qualitative analysis of e-mail communication between burn survivors. Grounded in 200+ e-mail messages between participants of an online support group, the study shows how burn survivors manage multiple, albeit contradictory, discourses of recovery. Using a narrative approach, we first highlight how burn survivors manage a tension between acceptance of their situation and resentment toward their circumstances. Then, we reveal how they cope with multiple meanings of beauty. Our study shows that online support groups can also privilege or enforce particular ways of thinking about recovery, such as valuing acceptance over resentment. In the conclusion, we suggest that surviving is a communicative accomplishment and propose that practitioners should engage in supportive communication without being patronizing.

Notes

We use the term “narrative” as an elastic term to encompass many activities, including the actual telling of a story as well as the overall communicative practice of speaking about events and concerns in one's life, whether this is done online or in face-to-face interaction. The term, as Garro and Mattingly (2000) point out, poses an important terminological challenge. However, we align with Fisher (1987), who argued that human beings are essentially homo narrans, “a species distinguished by its ability and predisposition to tell stories” (Sharf & Vanderford, 2003, p. 14). In essence, we agree with the authors that “the most common way of communicating our personally constructed ideas of the realities we experience is through the social sharing of narratives—stories about our lives” (p. 14).

All names that appear in the study, including the name of the group and participants, are pseudonyms.

E-mail messages included in the data were sometimes written by the same participants.