Examining Social Support Seeking Online

Minton, Brandon

Examining Social Support Seeking Online

dc.contributor.author	Minton, Brandon	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Hernandez, Ivan	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Calderwood, Charles	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Hauenstein, Neil M. A.	en
dc.contributor.department	Psychology	en
dc.date.accessioned	2021-05-13T13:29:10Z	en
dc.date.available	2021-05-13T13:29:10Z	en
dc.date.issued	2021	en
dc.description.abstract	Research across healthcare and organizational settings demonstrates the importance of social support to increase physical and mental well-being. However, the process of seeking social support is less well-understood than its outcomes. Specifically, research examining how people seek social support in natural settings is scarce. One natural setting increasingly used by people to seek support is the internet. In this online setting, people seek and provide social support verbally via social media platforms and messages. The present project seeks to further examine the nature of social support seeking in these online contexts by examining people’s language. This analysis includes discovering the common language features of social support seeking. By applying a data-driven content analysis approach, this research can examine the underlying themes present when seeking social support and build upon that insight to classify new instances of support seeking. These results would have important practical implications for occupational health. By identifying individuals who are seeking social support, future interventions will be able to take a more targeted approach in lending additional support to those individuals who have the greatest need. Subsequently, this application potentially provides the mental and physical health benefits of social support. Therefore, this research extends our knowledge of both the nature of support seeking and how to develop effective interventions.	en
dc.description.abstractgeneral	Research suggests that social support has important effects on our mental and physical health. To this point, though, the process of seeking social support has largely been neglected in research. Specifically, there hasn’t been much research on how social support is sought online. We know that people seek social support online by posting and messaging on social media. The present study seeks to examine the language of online support seeking—this way, we can understand what people tend to say when seeking support. The present study is concerned with the content of support seeking posts; by analyzing this content, we can understand themes that are prevalent in online support seeking. This allows us to better understand support seeking and, hopefully, better identify people in need of support. By identifying those people in need of support, we can ensure that their support needs are met and that they don’t suffer the health consequences related to a lack of social support. Therefore, this research extends our knowledge of social support seeking, both theoretically and practically.	en
dc.description.degree	M.S.	en
dc.format.medium	ETD	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/103264	en
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	In Copyright	en
dc.rights.uri	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/	en
dc.subject	Social Support	en
dc.subject	Online	en
dc.subject	Text Analysis	en
dc.subject	Machine learning	en
dc.title	Examining Social Support Seeking Online	en
dc.type	Thesis	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Industrial-Organizational	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	masters	en
thesis.degree.name	M.S.	en