Status Report

The community I chose to examine are people who are following a diet regimen known as Michael Thurmand's 6 Week Body Makeover and the two forums I am participating in are specific to people with more than 100 lbs to lose. I am engaged in both of these groups as a participant, although I make a special effort to just participate rather than lead, and to try to blend in with the users rather than stand out.

I have created spreadsheets to track participation and have begun by trying to analyse the make-up of both groups. I am paying close attention to who in the group are the most consistent posters, the frequency of posts in general, and am trying to get a feel for the forces that compel people to post. I hope to have enough data accumulated by the end of next week to either begin coding each posting, or, alternatively, to determine that there is not much to be gained by attempting to do so.

I have an incredibly heavy workload and often have difficulty in accessing the Internet. So, engaging in an online activity that requires me to become highly involved has not been high on my priority list recently. However, I think that participating in this online group, however "forced" it may seem, has actually given me some perspective in my own life and allowed me to move outside of my little world just a bit. I have been delving into questions about what it is that drives people to confess their weight problems to a like-minded audience, and just what these people are seeking and/or finding that keep them coming back and I have been digging deep to see what of these motivations I can find in myself. I have also been reviewing other research along this topic, including:

1. Schraefel, M., White, R. Andre, P. and Tan, D. (2009). Investigating web search strategies and forum use to support diet and weight loss. In CHI '09 Extended Abstracts. Link
2. Hwang, K. O., Farheen, k., Johnson, C. W., Thomas, E. J., Barnes, A. S., & Bernstam, E. V. (2007). Quality of weight loss advice on internet forums. American Journal of Medicine, 120(7), 604-609. Link