"We are here to give you emotional support": performing emotions in an online HIV/AIDS support group

Since the advent of the Internet, social critics have debated its effects on intimacy and social relationships. I show how, by writing detailed descriptions of their illness experiences, participants in online support groups create emotionally vibrant, empathic communities in which emotional rhetoric frames various moral dilemmas. I illustrate my argument with a detailed analysis of "emotion talk" among members of an HIV/AIDS support group over a 2-year period. My findings add to current debates by encouraging sociologists to consider the emotional dynamics within the online support group as a moral, rather than just psychological or therapeutic, component of interaction.