Inside and Outside the Circle: Understanding User Behavior Across Depression and Non-Depression Communities on Social Media

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-472-3_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

online social behavior; depression communities; interaction channels; user-generated content; comment features

Abstract

Plenty of studies show that user engagement in online mental health communities enhances social ties and mental well-being. However, prior research has mainly examined user interactions within specific communities, neglecting cross-community behavior. This study focuses on user-generated content and comments within and outside an online depression community on a social media platform. We collected 792,564 posts from 4,970 users and conducted analysis using a Logit binary choice model and a grouped panel regression model. Results reveal users tend to share symptom descriptions in the depression community, while they post life events outside the community. Posts with symptom descriptions receive more and longer comments within the depression community, while fewer and shorter ones outside. These comments are more positive in the depression community than those outside. Entertainment-related posts receive more and longer comments outside the depression community, while they receive shorter comments within. These findings offer novel insights into user behaviors across different interaction channels with community members, providing theoretical support for community managers to optimize user experiences.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuang Geng
AU  - Xue Yang
AU  - Ximin Huang
AU  - Jingyu Chen
AU  - Xusheng Wu
AU  - Yuefeng Qian
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/24
TI  - Inside and Outside the Circle: Understanding User Behavior Across Depression and Non-Depression Communities on Social Media
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Internet Technology and Educational Informatization (ITEI 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 23
EP  - 31
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-472-3_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-472-3_4
ID  - Geng2025
ER  -