The Role Of Online Communities In Reducing Urban-Rural Health Disparities In China By Social Support

With the explosive growth of social networks,the large amount of online data it generated has sparked a series of research.The potential of online communities to create social value for users and enterprises is gradually being explored,and to some extent this value can be used to solve many social issues.On the other hand,the world has witnessed tremendous economic growth in China and people's living standards have continued to rise since the country's reform and opening up.Despite the development,health care remains the leading concern of the Chinese people because of the rising costs of patient care and the unequal access to medical care.Especially in the problem of urban and rural areas,the health gap still exists and continues to expand.By reviewing relevant literature on the online community and the gap between urban and rural areas in China,we found that there are few literatures using online communities to study the medical gap between urban and rural areas in China.To fill this gap,this study integrates online community with urban-rural health inequality in China for the first time.We assume that online communities can reduce health disparities between urban and urban areas in China and use social network analysis methods to empirically explore it.Based on the theory of health capability and social support,we believe that online communities can improve the health capacity of rural patients by promoting online social support.and the research question is quantified as the exploration of the relationship patterns in online social support network.We collect a unique data set from an online community in China that focuses on lymphoma to build an online social support network.We use exponential random graph models to analyze the network structures and relationships formed in this community.We find that Chinese urban users are net suppliers of online social support,whereas Chinese rural participants are net recipients.We also found that in the network that reflects the flow of online social support,the probability of a city-to-country relationship is higher than that of a city-to-city.Results indicate that technology-mediated online health communities can alleviate urban-rural health disparities by exchanging information and improving the health capabilities of rural residents.In view of the huge health gaps between urban and rural areas in China,the Chinese government should strongly encourage and support the foundation of online health communities to reverse these situations.