scholarly journals How Social Context Cues in Online Support-Seeking Influence Self-Disclosure in Support Provision

2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 586-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyue Li ◽  
Bo Feng ◽  
Na Li ◽  
Xuan Tan
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
Context Cues

scholarly journals What You Say Is What You Get: How Self-Disclosure in Support Seeking Affects Language Use in Support Provision in Online Support Forums

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenjing Pan ◽  
Bo Feng ◽  
V. Skye Wingate
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
Competing Hypotheses

This experimental study examined how depth of self-disclosure (baseline, peripheral, core) in support-seeking posts influenced forum viewers’ interaction involvement and reciprocal self-disclosure in their responses. A series of competing hypotheses derived from several theoretical frameworks were tested. Results obtained from computerized text analyses showed that self-concept self-disclosure was associated with higher levels of interaction involvement and reciprocal self-disclosure in viewers’ response messages. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

The Influence of Self-Disclosure in Online Support Seeking on Quality of Received Advice

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Skye Wingate ◽  
Bo Feng ◽  
Chelsea Kim ◽  
Wenjing Pan ◽  
JooYoung Jang
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Support ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
Advice Quality

Advice of varying quality can be provided to support seekers online. This study examined whether the type of self-disclosure (demographic vs. self-concept) included in a support-seeking post elicits varying levels of advice quality in support provision. Participants ( N = 624) read and responded to an online support-seeking post. Their advice messages were assessed for quality as indexed by the use of reasoning and the sequencing of advice relative to other elements of supportive interactions (emotional support and problem inquiry and analysis). Overall, results suggested that most advice messages were behavior-oriented and did not contain reasoning or additional supportive acts. The type of self-disclosure did not affect advice quality. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Emotional Disclosures and Reciprocal Support over the Largest Parenting Forum on Reddit: Using Data Mining to Examine the Effect of Account Type and Anonymity on Supportive Communication (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supreet Mann ◽  
Michael C Carter
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Depressive Symptomatology ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Interpersonal Processes ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Parenting Support ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

BACKGROUND Online support forums allow users to seek advice, information, and emotional support on a variety of issues. Today’s parents navigate unique stressors both off- and on-line, and online forums can provide parents with the social support they need to address contemporary parenting issues. Increased social support can have a positive effect on mental health, including decreasing depressive symptomatology and acting as a buffer to stress. Online support forums may provide parents with increased anonymity to discuss sensitive topics and may provide minority parents with a larger social network for advice seeking. It is, therefore, critical that we examine online support forums to better understand the role that social support might play in these spaces and the way parent posts may influence response. OBJECTIVE Research examining social support processes in parenting forums is lacking. This study examines the interpersonal support process within the largest Reddit parenting forum, r/Parenting, to understand how anonymity plays a role in emotional self-disclosure of the parent-poster and subsequent commenter support. METHODS Comments and posts made to r/Parenting were collected using Reddit’s API in February of 2020 with a final sample of 118,277 posts and 697,095 comments. RESULTS Results suggest the use of throwaway accounts is an important factor in the way emotional self-disclosure occurs both in posts and comments. Our data evidenced that in an online forum for parents to seek advice, information, and support, the use of throwaway accounts was found to be an important factor in the degree of ESD included in both posts and comments. Additionally, there was a direct and positive relationship between the ESD of posts and ESD of comments. CONCLUSIONS This suggests that in contemporary society, online spaces may offer parents increased anonymity and greater affordances when it comes to connecting with others, and thus operate as critical venues for social support. We evidenced that one feature that affords users with a greater degree of anonymity online (i.e., pseudonyms) serve as critical component in online support seeking among parents, impacting both the process of support seeking and reception of social support over one of the most popular parenting support forums online, r/Parenting. This signals an evolution in the way’s parents seek social support from others. This paves the way for further research examining interpersonal processes and the impact online support has on family communication through parent support.

scholarly journals Online support-provision in the self-disclosure of eating disorders

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Azwin Zulkarnain ◽  
Jariah Mohd Jan ◽  
Ridwan Wahid
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Support Providers ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Seeking Help

This paper highlights the importance of appropriate communication with individuals who suffer from eating disorders (ED). The negative perception that society has towards ED often leads its patients to conceal their problems and avoid seeking help (Perveen et al., 2017). Understanding the manners in which support-providers approach ED patients in order to eliminate the fear is therefore important. Data was collected from the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) website from January to March 2018, where support-providers’ responses to posts of self-disclosure were qualitatively analyzed through computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) using McCormack’s (2010) Categories of Social Support and Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s (1984) Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP). Drawing on the categories of social support proposed by McCormack, it was found that most of the strategies that the support-providers opted for were highly positive and indirect in nature. The findings also showed that the indirect support given was often complemented with words of encouragement and a number of suggestions that were offered as part of the support itself. This allowed the support-providers to appear unimposing on the ED patients while being able to ensure that they were guided on the possible means of recovery.

scholarly journals Where and How to Look for Help Matters: Analysis of Support Exchange in Online Health Communities for People Living with HIV

Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Maestre ◽  
Susan Herring ◽  
Aehong Min ◽  
Ciabhan Connelly ◽  
Patrick Shih
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Online Support ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Online Health Communities ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
Support Exchange ◽  
Health Communities

Research is scarce on how direct and indirect support seeking strategies affect support exchange in online health communities. Moreover, prior research has relied mostly on content analysis of forum posts at the post level. In order to generate a more fine-grained analysis of support exchange, we conducted content analysis at the utterance level, taking directness of support seeking, quality of provision, forum type, and seeker gender into account. Our analysis of four popular online support forums for people living with human immunodeficiency virus found that type of support sought and provided, support seeking strategy, and quality of emotional support provision differed in care provider/formal forums versus social/informal forums. Interestingly, indirect support seeking tended to elicit more supportive emotional responses than direct support seeking strategies in all forums; we account for this in terms of type of support sought. Practical implications for online support communities are discussed.

Is Compassion Innate? A Psychological Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Agnes M.F. Wong
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Reward Systems ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
Support Seeking

In this chapter, the author looks at compassion from two psychological perspectives: evolutionary and developmental. Evolutionary psychology proposes that there are three emotion systems: threat/self-protect, drive/reward, and affiliative/soothing. By developing our capacity to mindfully access, accept, and direct affiliative motives and emotions—for others and ourselves—we can cultivate compassion skills to shift our mind toward the affiliative/soothing system and down-regulate the threat/self-protect and drive/reward systems. Developmental psychology further contributes to our understanding of compassion by proposing two behavioural systems: the attachment behavioural system that governs support-seeking and the caregiving behavioural system that governs support provision. It suggests that the interplay between these two systems may account for individual differences in the disposition to compassion. Last, the author shows that compassion not only benefits the recipients, but also improves the psychological health of the caregivers.

scholarly journals Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630512096520
Author(s):  
Brent J. Hale ◽  
Ryan Collins ◽  
Danielle K. Kilgo
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Online Support ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Coping With Cancer ◽  
Social Media Site ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Previous Scholarship

People who are affected by cancer can benefit greatly from social support and digital social networks, though our understanding of online support is primarily founded in dominant platforms like Facebook. In addition, while previous scholarship indicates that social support is available online, little research has examined predictors of support provision. A content analysis was performed to examine the relationship between narrative features in Imgur posts and social support in comments. Imgur ( Imgur.com ) is a social media site and image-hosting platform, amassing over 250 million monthly visitors. Six post features were hypothesized to predict support, including explanations of the diagnosis experience, evidence of agentive problem solving, indications of positive reappraisal, pleads for the audience to get a checkup, references to mortality, and inclusion of humor. The results of this study indicate a relationship between narrative construction and social support, finding that the inclusion of narrative features in cancer-related posts influenced the provision of support in comments. Findings of this study could have implications for a multitude of stakeholders interested in social support provision, including healthcare professionals and researchers interested in the use of social media platforms for support, and organizations interested in designing supportive online platforms for individuals coping with cancer.

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