‘You'll find lots of help here’ unpacking the function of an online Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) forum

The paper reports on the analysis of online postings from a Rheumatoid Arthritis asynchronous forum. Despite the rapid increase of internet users, the role of health related online communities is still underexplored. In this paper we draw on sociolinguistics and medical sociology research in order to problematize the online community notion and to unpack the functions of one forum through the analysis of data from newly diagnosed users. The analysis of the threads shows that the users orient to a set of roles which include both task and rapport oriented functions. We close the paper by showing how the members contribute to the construction of a collective identity. Finally we return to the theoretical considerations raised in our paper and identify areas for further research.