In Search of Empathy Online: A Review of 100 Online Communities

Empathy, knowing, feeling and responding to the way another person feels, is so essential in some online communities that they can be described aptly as ‘empathic communities’. This paper discusses a review of 100 online communities. The aim of this review is to examine whether the existence of empathic communities is widespread and to compare these communities with a range of other online communities, whose focus includes religion, sports, pets, culture, science, etc. The results of our analysis suggest that empathic communities develop when patient support or emotional support topics are the focus of interest. Introduction Online communities are no longer confined to serving as a medium for the exchange of information and knowledge by technical people. Today, users from diverse cultural backgrounds, computer expertise, and interests turn to online communities to reach others. (Pitkow K (b) feeling what another person is feeling; and (c) responding compassionately to another person’s distress. This broad categorization provides the basis for our work on identifying and characterizing online communities that exhibit strong empathy which we will call empathic communities. Research has shown empathy to be strongest when people share a common experience (Ickes, 1997), common frame of mind (Ickes, 1993), and when they are increasingly exposed to empathy (Hodges and Wegner, p.139). Moreover, it has been observed that empathy is conveyed primarily through touch, gesture, gaze, and posture. (Eisenberg et al., 1989)(Lanzetta and Englis, 1989). This last finding is particularly interesting for online communities since the majority are text-based. An important question is how well and in what ways is empathy conveyed via text? In previous studies (Preece, 1998a, 1998b) we describe the importance of empathy in an online patient support community. Results showed that communicating empathy was as important as exchanging factual information. One of the aims of this review was, therefore, to see if empathy is a strong phenomenon in other online communities, and if so, what other characteristics tend to be associated with empathic communities. With the increased popularity of online communities, it is important to begin considering how empathic communities develop, change over time, and how we can characterize them. Answers to these questions will aid in improving the design of online communities for empathic communication. Method One hundred communities were selected from those available on the Internet through search engines. Selection of communities was ad hoc since the kind and number of communities on the Internet are changing daily. This was also an exploratory study. Classification of the sites was done separately by the two authors. There was high agreement between the authors and only one community was reclassified. The topic areas covered by the communities are: – patient and emotional support communities (59 communities), – other communities (41 communities), which comprise: cultural (4 communities), pets (5), religion (3), scientific (6), societal (5), sports (9), miscellaneous (9)