Social Network Structure of a Large Online Community for Smoking Cessation
Friday, May 21, 2010
Social Network Structure of a Large Online Community for Smoking Cessation
Cobb NK, Graham AL, Abrams DB. American Journal of Public Health, published online ahead of print May 13, 2010.
This study examined the social network structure of QuitNet, one of the largest online communities for smoking cessation, and compared its characteristics to other known social networks. The authors concluded that the QuitNet community is a large-scale social network with the characteristics required for sustainability of social support and social influence to promote smoking cessation and abstinence. These characteristics include persistence of members over time, heterogeneity of smoking status, and evidence of rich, bidirectional communications. Some of the influential subgroups we identified may provide targets for future network-level interventions.
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