Page 107 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

Network approval includes favorable/positive reactions in the form of direct (e.g., when a pair is told that they are a perfect match) or indirect expressions (e.g., invited together to events). Network support comprises emotional (expressions of caring), informational (advice), and instrumental forms (assistance and material aid), whereas network embeddedness involves couple members’ belonging to a common network. These dimensions are relevant in the conceptualization of SNSs relationship support.
SNSs relationship support. Based on a communication perspective, social support includes “verbal and nonverbal communication...that reduces uncertainty about the situation, the self, the other, or the relationship...” (Albrecht & Adelman, 1987, p.19). Drawing from this perspective and from a social network perspective of relationships (Felmlee, 2001), we define SNSs relationship support as relationship-related supportive communication that couple members may access and receive from their networks via SNSs. We conceptualized SNSs relationship support as having four dimensions: Emotional, informational, embeddedness, and instrumental support. On SNSs, couples may be able to access emotional support (e.g., receiving positive comments on relationship-related posts), informational support (e.g., getting information and advice about one’s partner), and embeddedness (e.g., having common SNSs contacts who share attitudes and beliefs). We conceptualized instrumental support as the availability of people among their SNSs contacts who they can ask for assistance or help when their partner is in need (e.g., having people in one’s social network to assist when one is unable to provide direct help to the partner).
On SNSs, couples are able to display their relational identity to their network which could impact on the way their network perceives them. In a study of Emery et al. (2015), they found that couples who display their relational identity on SNSs were perceived by observers as likable. This suggests that with SNSs’ social affordances, couples may lower the cost of maintaining social networks and may help manage impressions to facilitate resource exchanges, such as sharing of relevant information and conveying of emotional support (Ellison et al., 2014, Tong & Walther, 2011). Previous studies have shown that couple members who are experiencing doubts or uncertainty about their relationship deliberately and actively gather information from their partner’s SNSs activities (Fox et al., 2013; Tokunaga, 2010). Consequently, couple members may also obtain and receive information and emotional support from their networks via SNS (Muise et al., 2009; Tokunaga, 2010; Utz & Beukeboom, 2011). Such information may help
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