Actively converging How patients use multiple information sources to fulfill their social support needs

Cancer is the second most common disease, and the incidence of cancer is rising. Cancer patients have many cognitive and affective needs (hereafter called social support needs). Currently, the two primary sources of information are medical experts and online health information. To fulfil their social support needs, patients often use a combination of these sources. In this dissertation, I aimed to investigate 1) what social support needs patients seek to fulfil by combining multiple media sources (i.e., convergence), 2) how these social support needs influence online health information use, and 3) the effects of convergence on patient outcomes (satisfaction, recall, and medication adherence). In this dissertation I show how online health information, previously used as an umbrella term, could be divided into peer and expert-generated platforms and content. These different kinds of content aim to fulfill different social support needs. Furthermore, when I look at how cancer patients combine multiple sources of information (i.e., convergence) we see that different sources seem to fulfill different social support needs. Furthermore, patients also report different unmet social support needs after either consulting the internet or the doctor. Patients turn to a forum to fulfill those unmet social support needs. Lastly, when patients and doctors explicitly converge the online health information and the expert knowledge of the doctor, we see a more satisfied patient and recall of health information increases. A more integrated approach between online health information and information provided by the doctor, both in academia and practice, is advised.