Decision Making and Support in Healthcare Online Social Networks

Recently Online Social Communities and Networks (OSN) have become widely popular as a source of data or reference for those seeking advice. It is apparent that properly governed and designed OSNs can play an important role in supporting different types of decision making (DM), as they provide their participants various forms of support, ranging from the instrumental to the emotional and informational. This study addresses the potential utilization of OSN as a support tool for the decision-making process. To better understand the relationship between decision making and support and OSN, this research will focus on Healthcare-orientated Online Social Networks (HOSN). We consider DM in HOSNs to verify the existence of DM phases and the sequence in which these phases are reached. We use Netnography as the main research methodology and Online Survey as the secondary method to explore and extend, as well as challenge, existing knowledge of OSN and DM.