Social Role Transitions and Technology: Societal Change and Coping in Online Communities

Abstract

Technological and societal changes unfold in relation to one another. Many events like becoming a parent, getting divorced, or getting a medical diagnosis dictate a change in one’s social role. Social role transition can have negative consequences including stress, stigmatization, and disempowerment. Social interactions, especially communicating with allies and those facing similar conditions, can alleviate the psychological burden of these challenges. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how people use technology to cope with social role change, and how the features of different online communities provide a range of ways to make sense of their social role transition, find support, and advocate for change.

In the first study (Chapter 3), I qualitatively analyze interviews with fathers and a sam- ple of father blogs to show how fathers use do-it-yourself (DIY) language on blogs and in their online interactions as a means of redefining fatherhood. Fathers use the DIY concept to build their own father-centric online communities in order to manage some of the disad- vantages associated with the lack of parenting online communities that cater to them. This new framing of fatherhood allows fathers to make sense of their new role as parents, and at the same time, to redefine the social norms around fatherhood.

In Chapter 4, I study how parents use social media sites at scale using natural language processing. The focus of the analysis is on Reddit, a social media site that allows users to comment under pseudonyms. I find that parents use pseudonymous social media sites to discuss topics that might otherwise be considered too sensitive to discuss on real-name social media sites such as Facebook (e.g., breastfeeding and sleep training). This study also outlines similarities and differences in discussion topics among mothers and father on Reddit (e.g., mothers discussing breastfeeding and fathers discussing divorce and custody).

Finally, in Chapter 5, I use computational and qualitative methods to study how anony- mous accounts on Reddit (throwaway accounts) provide parents with varying levels of anonymity as they cope with social role changes by sharing potentially stigmatizing infor- mation (e.g., postpartum depression) or advocating for stigmatized identities (e.g., divorced fathers). Finally, based on my findings, I present design recommendations that could pro- mote better social support on platforms beyond Reddit.