Practicum#4- Yen

Hello everyone!

This time I want to talk about the interesting features in supportgroups.com. After spending quite a lot of time interacting with the users in this site, I find that my research starts to get quite emotional and sometimes it doesn’t feel great to read all the problems people facing at times of depression and grieving. Looking at all the sad faces they typed in those posts, sometimes I feel discouraging in giving support because it seems like I can’t really provide good suggestions for them and they think that my suggestion doesn’t work. Due to an ethic concern, I feel like I need to be more creative and provide more constructive comments on their posts to cheer them up.

To switch the atmosphere a little bit, I change my focus to the Videos section. As I look into the posts in this area, I feel that it is so much different from the Support Someone section. The messages and contents are much more encouraging and cheerful. In this section, users post videos that they find useful in helping themselves or others to feel better. They share how they feel after watching the videos and recommend them to other users who experience similar situations as they do to work as a sense of healing by helping others. Many of them share videos of relaxation music, slideshow presentation on ways to cope, knowledge about their illnesses, insightful messages and funny facts about their experiences. Sensitive topics are discussed in more relaxed and less intensive manner which makes the users feel more comfortable in sharing and creating an enlivening space together. Like in one video named How to Tell If You Are a Shopaholic, they analyze the problem in an informative and humorous way that can make shopaholics become more reflective on their behavior with less frustrations and guilt. It is interesting to discover that embedding other forms of media can greatly change the atmosphere that can invoke a different reaction towards the message presented to the receiver. By watching the videos they posted, I gained understanding on their experiences and see a brighter side of their issues. I find it interesting to watch all these videos and I enjoy the gleefulness in this section. It gives more hope and joy to users in which I think this actually is a better way of giving support to all these people who are suffering.