question help: Ethnography research, please respond. - Help.com

Thanks for all the input guys and gals, gonna start writing it today and hopefully get most of it done. It’s due in 4 days :p And yeah I’ve had 3 weeks to do it but you know, games and procrastination lol. I’m just super excited for my summer classes to be over, it’s been hellish for the most part. Ugh.

Thanks for the support all, wrote my paper this morning and turned it in at noon (EST). I think it will do fairly well, so thanks again. :) I’ll close this post in a few days in the event someone wants me to share the paper I wrote, but it’s almost 3 pages lol, so it’s kinda lengthy.

Lol I was just about to close this. Gimmy a sec to find it.

Ethnographic Research: Strangers helping strangers
By: Martin DeWitt
June 2012

Ever help someone out with advice or a kind word? Well what was your reasoning behind it? That is the basis behind my ethnographic research paper, the simple yet complex question of: “Why do strangers on the internet help other strangers on the internet with real life problems?” Having frequented a site dedicated to helping others myself, I set out to find a generalized answer to this question.

So the place I conducted my research at is a site I am familiar with as well as a member of, so the people there know me and to a degree take my word and requests seriously. The site I am referring to is simply named Help.com, one that is currently owned by CBS Interactive and has been around for about 7 years now. I myself have been a member there for a little over 4 years and while I’ve come and gone in patches of time, I do find myself there now on occasion at about 3 times a week with about 4 to 6 replies each common visit. The people that visit the site are from all over the world, but most commonly I would say it’s visited by Canadians, Americans, Europeans, and the people of India. However there are again many who visit the site, but just not as commonly.

Some of the key informants for the research I conducted are members of help.com website that have been there for a really long time, even longer than me. Just like an anthropologist would need to live among the people of a village to understand their culture, so have I lived among the people of help.com long enough to truly understand the culture that surrounds it, which believe it or not there really is a sort of culture based in and around the website, most of which revolves around the rules and what’s acceptable and tolerable. So some of the activities I observed on the website were things ranging from staying logged in for nearly a whole day, very methodical ways of answering posts, and generally overall age and maturity differences of different users.

I did encounter some issues with my research unfortunately. Even though I’ve been a member of the website for years, the site itself has been on the decline in terms of member count and user visits for years also. The administrators that maintain the site also maintain hundreds of other websites and so because this one is catastrophically failing it isn’t watched and updated as it should be. However it’s actually worse sometimes as there have been select cases where the administrators themselves have trolled the website out of pure fun, which always tarnishes the good name of the site. Short of someone buying the site out, there isn’t any way of fixing the problem, a sad truth. This really isn’t a problem directly, but it is indirectly since my sample size was smaller than it should have been if the site was being maintained.

Getting to the topic at hand, we turn now to address the question I came about asking, which is why do complete strangers from all parts of the world help other complete strangers from all over the world with real life problems? The question seems simple, and while the answer is fairly simple there are some interesting results that popped up even from such a small sample size, which was about 16 people total. While the observations I’ve made on the topic were answered and did occur, I did have to directly ask the users of the site for an answer as general observation would not have easily allowed an answer. I can however give some insight into the types of people who visit the site and the types of problems that occur most there. I did also have some limitations when it came to the site, again mostly with direct numbers being an issue. While I did get 16 people to answer the simple question, it opened it up to several answers that can fall into categories, but to confirm these categories I would need several dozen more results. I should note that I did also inquire everyone to include the years they’ve been a member of the site as well as their age or age range. I did this in the event I would find a common theme, and thankfully I did.

Now for what you’ve been waiting to read, which I am assuming is what I found as results to the question of why do strangers help other strangers on the internet. Thankfully I inquired the users that answered to include their age or age range as well as the time they’ve been a member of the site. Because of this I was able to see a connection and common theme among the users on why they help strangers in general. It can basically be broken down into 3 major reasons for helping people, which are:
1. People came searching for help for themselves and later wanted to help others in return.
2. The satisfaction one receives from helping another in need.
3. The desire to have social interaction and friendship from anyone available.

I did receive a few other random reasons, one of which is a secondary reason I myself visit the site which is to obtain global knowledge from the many people out there, so gain wisdom from everyone everywhere. It’s a warming challenge to try and learn from someone on the other side of the world, and it truly does help in the day to day life I live to know why someone in India might do the things they do, such as arranged marriage.

The main three reasons that I’ve listed though are very consistent with the group of people who answered my interview questions though. The group contained people that have been members ranging from only a few months to members that have been there for over 6 years. The age range also varied greatly from users that were only 13 years of age to up into their late 50’s. This actually helped greatly too as it showed a common theme that the younger generation and the older generation had different interests when it came to the reason they wanted to help a stranger.

For the younger generation it seemed very obvious that they overall cared more about helping someone because they needed help themselves and wanted to be socially accepted into modern day society. A common occurrence would be when a young girl would have relationship problems and would post a question for help on the topic, but would then in turn answer other posts that revolved around that very topic so that they might try to help both understand their own problem and help others with situations they themselves are dealing with or have dealt with. Helping others on a similar topic created a social acceptance for their thoughts and reasoning for their own problems.

The older generation however was generally not worried about social acceptance as a whole and was overall helping others simply for the pure satisfaction of making sure that others got the help they needed and deserved. To many of the older users, they themselves have lived through the many problems life offers such as relationship and job related issues. Because they have either lived through it or are living through it they see all the reason in the world to make sure that others who are suffering get the attention they need. The result of that direct help makes the user really satisfied and happy to know that they made a difference in their life.

I myself have helped an individual before on a topic (I don’t recall the situation, was years ago) that the poster of the topic was depressed and really upset. Through careful words and my previous understanding of the topic I was able to help the individual resolve their problem and while it took a few weeks the user returned to inform me that they were very thankful for my support and that it overall made their life better. They then went on to help many other users since on the help.com website with a renewed faith in humanity and themselves. The feeling of joy I received from this was great, so great that it’s hard to put into words, but it really does make you feel like your life has meaning.

Getting back to the topic I do have one last general answer to cover. People often come to the website in search of an answer, generally they stumble on help.com because google spits out this site on their front page if you google the word help. From there it’s simple to ask a question and generally if it’s during the UK or US peak times the question will get answered fairly fast with several answers. So someone asks for help, and if it’s a particularly difficult topic for the poster of the question they tend to take the advice and answers heavily to heart. In turn they feel compelled to help others as they see a list of topics on the main page. Once they help a few it will become a make or break situation where they turn into a member or they disappear completely.

Overall, despite the reasons people help others, there is a common theme among all that is easier to talk to a stranger about your problems and even taboo topics simply because they do not have to worry that you will tell their family or friends, that you will never truly know them. Since everyone on the site uses a fake name, or an avatar and handle, they are never really subject to their life problems being made public to the ones that matter. At help.com they are able to talk about marriage problems, suicide thoughts, and even general medical issues without any of the worry of a family member or friend finding out. This opens people up to discuss the problems more openly and to usually get the answers and help they need.

I am satisfied with the results of this research project too, as it really shows that in general there is a population of people, no matter the location on earth, that really just want to get help and give help wherever possible. Only through helping others from all walks of life will people understand why some cultures act so differently. Whether it’s an American learning about an Indian’s arranged marriage system, or a Chinese teenager understanding the life of an English resident, it all makes a difference in changing tolerance and acceptance.