Exploring features of social support in a Chinese online smoking cessation community: A multidimensional content analysis of user interaction data

Due to the rapid development of information technology, an increasing number smokers choose online smoking cessation communities interact with other individuals help themselves quit smoking. Though it is well known that social support plays a key role in process cessation, features one can get from remain unclear. We collected user interaction data largest Chinese community, forum Baidu Tieba. selected 2758 replies 29 active repliers and 408 correlated posts as our set. Multidimensional content analysis carried out three aspects: posting scenarios, quitting behavior stages, types support. This article also explores co-occurrence relationships different by network analysis. Results showed users receive compositions various scenarios stages. In most cases, emotional typical community provides. The will provide more informational when needed. Besides, support, especially personal experience perceptual knowledge, has diverse combination patterns “Gratitude-Mutual assistance” “Encouragement-Mutual are frequent relationships. brings people who together, rich for each other. Users effectively obtain expected Smoking projects should be designed promote communication interaction, which positively affects achieving users’ goals.