BACKGROUND
Visual discomfort associated with clusters of holes attracted scientific attention after becoming a widely discussed topic on the Internet. Social networking sites facilitate communication among niche groups with health concerns, as well as the sharing of visual images that might cause trypophobic symptoms. Therefore, an empirical study of trypophobia related communication patterns in the internet space becomes necessary.
OBJECTIVE
Describe communication patterns in a Facebook group for trypophobia, detecting frequent topics, top contributors, and their discourses.
METHODS
Internet-based texts were analyzed through webometric methods. We detected key commenters and performed word frequency analysis, word co-occurrence analysis, and content analysis.
RESULTS
Most sampled users (41.94%) were from North America, followed by users that didn’t disclose their location (30.68%) and users from Europe (14.56%). Impactful users posted and replied more often than the average sampled users, discussing peer-reviewed science while triggering content was actively removed. A wide variety of triggers that have not been discussed in trypophobia related literature before were discussed, like the Surinam toad. Symptom management techniques focused on the mitigation of anxiety and stress, and in destroying the trigger. However, there was lack of discussion of peer-reviewed treatments, despite that a few members are also research scientists.
CONCLUSIONS
The combination of a few expert gatekeepers with many supportive amateur gatekeepers willing to understand trypophobia, and active monitoring by administrators might contribute to in-group trust and sharing of peer-reviewed science by top users. These are preliminary conditions for more engagement with researchers in diffusing and researching effective treatments for trypophobia.