Modeling social support on social media: Effect of publicness and the underlying mechanisms

• Published in: Computers in human behavior Vol. 87; pp. 263 - 275
• Main Authors: Liu, Bingjie, Wei, Lewen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elmsford Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2018; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Between-subjects design; Bystander effect; Digital media; Face threat; Goal attribution; Impression formation; Personalism; Publicness; Social networks; Social support; Impression formation; Publicness; Goal attribution; Bystander effect; Personalism; Face threat
• ISSN: 0747-5632; 1873-7692
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.006

Research has suggested social media might not be an ideal place to get social support. This study examined how publicness of support seeking might influence the quantity and quality of received support by testing six potential underlying mechanisms. We conducted a 3 (publicness: private, medium, public) X 2 (problem severity: mild vs. severe) between-subjects online experiment with 196 college students. Participants were shown a screenshot of a fellow student’s message about a recent adverse experience that was either delivered as a public post, a post visible to friends, or a private message. Compared with public support seeking, private message led to higher likelihood to help among observers, more effort in helping, and higher quality of supportive messages. Specifically, publicness increased attribution to social validation goal when the problem was not severe, reduced attribution to support-seeking goal when the problem was severe, reduced favorable perceptions and perception of personalism, which all contributed to the failure of support seeking. •High publicness fosters attribution to social validation goal, reduces attribution to support seeking goal.•High publicness reduces support seeker’s social attraction and personalism.•High publicness leads observers to perceive helping as a social norm to conform to.•Private messages lead to more favorable support-seeking outcomes in terms of quantity and quality.