Wednesday 16 May 2012

Tutorial Six: The internet and on-line communities.

The chosen area of interest that I have picked from fieldwork to search for online communities is strokes. The online communities I have chosen help support, offer information and help those who have suffered from strokes or had close ones experiences them to network and find help from these sites.

The Stroke Network  

Stroke Community

The stroke Foundation website can be found by clickinghere.

The Purpose of this site is to inform people about news updates, allow people to network and find comfort and support in others, it has links to information that can be easily accessed and also has campaigns running that people can be a part of. People seek to contribute to this community to bring a sense of unity and to be informed. The community allows the page users to not feel ‘alone’ and can comment and talk to others.The information on the page can be posted onto to give feedback and other can write back. The site is very active and has many links to clink on and things to look at. People can contribute to this site by commenting on things, being a volunteer and contributing to fundraising events.The site allows the user to contact them through email and has numerous locations in which they can be found throughout NZ.

The Stroke Network is a page that can be found by clicking here.

The Stoke Network page is a network of sites, woven together to provide you with stroke support and information.  This is where people can blog their feelings, comment on what others have written, read information about strokes and what they entail and link too many other supporting sites about strokes. The site is very interactive because there are many ways the user can contribute to this site such as the things I mentioned before about the blogs ect. The intended purpose for this site is to inform and help those in need of information about stroke and needing support.  People can contribute to the page by registering and receiving emails watch and upload videos and participate in polls.

Stoke Community can be found by clicking here.

Is a site where you can post questions and read what others have written. There is plenty of links to research and find out about a lot of health information. There’s links to find a doctor near you and even a link to talk to an expert. You can register to the site and keep track of the things you have looked at, a profile that others can see and a way to look and others profiles and interact with them.

These sites relate to occupational deprivation there are links that explain how a stroke can be life altering and can hinder occupations you might once have done easily that perhaps now you can’t do at all. They also relate to occupational transition where they have information about the life changes that will have to be made, and things might change in your day to day living. There are links to how these changes can affect you and how best to deal with them.

The benefits of these sites are that people can come to these sites and get support from others, from information through links, photographs, videos, newsletters and much more. There are limitations to these communities also, such as someone could post false information over the posts and someone could rely on this source of information as being totally true. This could lead them astray. People using these sites could begin to get so absorbed in finding new information and talking to others like them that they get sucked into the virtual world and forget to go out in the real world.

There are many ethical issues that can arise when using online community websites such as lack of client confidentiality people could use people’s names without consent. There also could be a bit of identity misuse where people could post pretending to be other people.


References:
Med Help. (1993). Stroke community. Retrieved from http://www.medhelp.org/forums/Stroke/show/62


The Stoke Network. (2008). The Stroke Network. Retrieved from http://www.strokenetwork.org/

Stroke Foundation. (n.d.). The Stroke Foundation New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.stroke.org.nz/









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