Socio-Technical Journeys: Utilizing Digital Narratives for Management and Community Support

Abstract

The pervasive integration of technology into everyday life and the rising tendency to share journeys, particularly major life transitions, within supportive online spaces, position these journeys as inevitably socio-technical. Emotional well-being is vital for individuals navigating these emotional rollercoasters, as it helps them maintain resilience and informs their decision-making. This dissertation broadly introduces a notion of socio-technical journeys, drawing on community-centered digital narratives as avenues to examine how emotional experiences shared online through individuals' journeys pinpoint areas requiring support and how they guide context-aware, effective management. This dissertation includes three studies using long-distance hiking on the Appalachian Trail as a context of focus. The first study develops a systematized dataset from hikers' community blogs, capturing their lived experiences. The second study investigates hikers' use of blogs, the gratifications they seek, and employs emotion analysis and topic modeling to identify factors influencing their emotional states, enabling implications for digital reflective tools. The third study examines how technology-facilitated records of hikers' experiences can support cooperative and sustainable trail and visitor use management. Together, these studies demonstrate how digital narratives deepen community understanding, raise ethical considerations, inform the design of reflective technologies, and offer data-driven strategies to enhance support and effective management during complex life transitions.