Linguistic Coping Strategies in Online Forums for Multiple Sclerosis: Insights for Peer Support and Digital Wellbeing

This study investigates how people living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) use language to articulate coping strategies in a large Italian online forum. Drawing on a corpus of nearly 15,000 messages authored by individuals with MS, we examine three distinct types of forum posts: initial messages that open a thread, self-replies written by the same user, and responses by other participants. Through a mixed- methods approach that combines linguistic profiling, readability metrics, and topic modeling, we identify structural, grammatical, and stylistic features that charac- terize different stages of online interaction. Our findings reveal a functional shift from autobiographical narration in initial posts to more dialogic, supportive, and emotionally expressive language in replies. We identify three recurring coping strate- gies emerging from forum discourse: (1) problem-focused coping, through detailed medical narratives and treatment decisions; (2) symptom-focused coping, involving bodily awareness and self-monitoring; and (3) emotion-focused coping, based on gratitude, reassurance, and social bonding. By highlighting the expressive and rela- tional functions of language in peer communication, this study contributes to the understanding of digital coping mechanisms in chronic illness contexts. It also offers insights for the development of linguistically informed tools capable of detecting emotional distress, emerging needs, or social disengagement. In the context of Active and Assisted Living (AAL), our findings suggest that language can act as a “soft sensor”, supporting more sensitive and user-centered approaches to digital health technologies