The Roles of Opinion Leaders in Elevating Online Health Discussion: Evidence from Reddit.

Social networking sites and online communities are used by billions of people globally. It is important to understand the participation in these collaborative platforms and the roles different participants play. In this study, we examine the roles both local and global opinion leaders play and their influence on the community using content related to Covid mental health from Reddit. We employed social network analysis to identify opinion leaders based on their network position and connections, and we used sentiment analysis and econometric models to examine their impact on online health community participation. Our study reveals that global opinion leaders have more influence on thread participation than local opinion leaders. In addition, negative emotions expressed encourage more participants’ involvement in online health community discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]