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Abstract
Through the use of text mining and semantic network analysis, I identified patterns of supportive communication within online infertility support groups. Unlike previous studies of supportive messaging, this study moves beyond a dichotomy of informational and emotional support to explore the construction of supportive communication. I conducted a semantic network and rhetorical analysis of 60 of the top posts of all time from the r/Infertility subreddit, and found that supportive communication was enacted through de-personalizing the loss, validating anger, and accepting alternative routes to motherhood. This analysis suggests that supportive communication adopts and abandons medicalized logics.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. Stacey Connaughton for reading earlier versions of this paper.
Disclosure statement
The author has no conflicts to declare.
Notes
1 Data were collected in August 2019. The total number of comments and upvotes may have increased since then, and some posts may no longer be available on r/Infertility.
2 During pre-processing “fuck” was standardized to “fucking.” Both words were reoccurring within the text, so as a means to explore fully how anger was being communicated, I chose to standardize to “fucking” because, of the two, it was the word with the higher degree centrality.
3 Degree is based on the number of other words that are in direct contact with a node. Betweenness centrality is measured by the frequency with which a node falls between other nodes on the shortest geodesic distance path connecting them. Betweenness is useful in this context because a high betweenness centrality indicates that a word serves as a bridge between other nodes in the network.