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Online discussion board e so ity f nd the e n th etw results show that the type of empathic communication (e.g. different kinds of support) is linked to the ter-me ted in Netwo these e the not taking into account the network of links and relationships that people form in these online communities. But what are the charac-teristics of the social networks of empathic online communities? Does the support that is being exchanged in these communities re-late to specific network structures? In our study, we aim to address these issues by investigating an empathic online community for older people. In recent years, the number of older people that use the internet is constantly growing. on the network structures (Zaphiris & Sarwar, 2006). In a former study, we did a qualitative content analysis of the messages in the discussion board about depression within Senior-Net, an empathic online community for older people (Pfeil & Zaph-iris, 2007). In our analysis, we realised that the content of the messages is only one aspect of the online community and in order to fully understand the activities within the discussion board we also need to investigate the social network structure and relation-ships between the members of the online community. In the cur-rent study we aim to build on the former findings and allows for a better understanding of communication and network patterns * Corresponding author