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"We Are Here to Give You Emotional Support": Performing Emotions in an Online HIV/AIDS Support Group
Shirly Bar-Lev*
Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer, Israel
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: shirly.barlev{at}gmail.com.
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Abstract |
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Since the advent of the Internet, social critics have debated its effects on intimacy and social relationships. I show how, by writing detailed descriptions of their illness experiences, participants in online support groups create emotionally vibrant, empathic communities in which emotional rhetoric frames various moral dilemmas. I illustrate my argument with a detailed analysis of "emotion talk" among members of an HIV/AIDS support group over a 2-year period. My findings add to current debates by encouraging sociologists to consider the emotional dynamics within the online support group as a moral, rather than just psychological or therapeutic, component of interaction.
First published on January 11, 2008, doi:10.1177/1049732307311680
Qualitative Health Research 2008;18:509.
A more recent version of this article appeared on April 1, 2008

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[Abstract]
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