Page 143 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

to ensure that the concept of social support is equally meaningful and relevant across the various social interactions and relationships being compared in the respective studies. In Chapter 2, social support was conceptualized and measured as perceived social support since this is 1) context sensitive and 2) comparable across social interaction contexts (e.g., SNS and face-to-face, with home and host-country networks) for sojourners (Trepte, Dienlin, & Reinecke, 2015). A general measure of perceived social support meets the two requirements better than other conceptualizations and forms of social support (e.g., enacted or received social support, SNS-based social support). In Chapter 5, social support was conceptualized as SNS-based relationship support. This conceptualization was more in line with the aim of the study (i.e., to investigate the role of SNS in relational adjustment) in relation to the main argument that couples (geographically-disparate or not) are able to establish and maintain a shared network on SNS. SNS-based relationship support was more meaningful when comparing LDRR and GCRR’s access to network support. GCRR couples have a relatively more intact (offline) social networks making offline relationship support more accessible for them (Weiner & Hannum, 2012), Thus, SNS use provides comparable opportunities for LDRR and GCRR to access relationship support within the platform.
The discrepancy in the findings between the association of SNS interactions and the two types of support (perceived social support and SNS-based relationship support) is in line with the findings of a study that compared the associations of SNS interactions with (general) perceived social support and SNS-based social support (Li et al., 2015). In a cross-sectional survey study, Li and colleagues (2015) found that SNS interactions are positively associated with SNS-based social support. However, SNS interaction was not associated with perceived social support. Moreover, SNS-based social support was not correlated with perceived social support. The authors explained that SNSs alone do not promote individuals’ sense of being more supported, despite actual experiences of support within the platform. According to them, it takes more forms of social interactions, not just SNS, for individuals to feel supported.
Similarly, this dissertation showed that SNS interaction positively predicted SNS-based relationship support. Within the platform, sojourners did feel supported by their network, particularly in the context of their romantic relationship. One possible explanation is that in the context of relationship support, there are very limited number of social contexts where couples could
General Discussion 141