Exploring the User Interaction Network in an Anxiety Disorder Online Community: An Exponential Random Graph Model with Topical and Emotional Effects

The increasing number of people with anxiety disorders presents challenges when gathering health information. Users in anxiety disorder online communities (ADOCs) share and obtain a variety of health information, such as treatment experience, drug efficacy, and emotional support. This interaction alleviates the difficulties involved in obtaining health information. Users engage in community interaction via posts, comments, and replies, which promotes the development of an online community as well as the wellbeing of community users, and research concerning the formation mechanism of the user interaction network in ADOCs could be beneficial to users. Taking the Anxiety Disorder Post Bar as the research object, this study constructed an ADOC user interaction network based on users’ posts, comments, and personal information data. With the help of exponential random graph models (ERGMs), we studied the effects of the network structure, user attributes, topics, and emotional intensity on user interaction networks. We found that there was significant reciprocity in the user interaction network in ADOCs. In terms of user attributes, gender homogeneity had no impact on the formation of the user interaction network. Experienced users in the community had obvious advantages, and experienced users could obtain replies more easily from other members. In terms of topics, pathology popularization showed obvious homogeneity, and symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder showed obvious heterogeneity. In terms of emotional intensity, users with polarized emotions were more likely to receive replies from users with positive emotions. The probability of interaction between two users with negative emotions was small, and users with opposite emotional polarity tended to interact, especially when the interaction was initiated by users with positive emotions.