Pros and Cons of Online Social Support Exchange on Social Networking Sites: A User’s Perspective
Published Online: Nov 23, 2023
Page range: 103 - 125
Received: Jan 01, 2023
Accepted: Jun 01, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/subbs-2023-0004
Keywords
© 2023 Roman Lyubenko, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The article dissects the subject of online social support exchange on social networking sites, or SNS (mostly Facebook and Instagram) through the eyes of the platforms’ active users. Drawing on 20 semistructured in-depth interviews with SNS users from Ukraine, it discusses both the benefits of support exchange in the online realm, such as speed, resilience, unobtrusiveness, and its drawbacks, such as depersonalization, ‘ghosting,’ and privacy concerns. The text also explores the sentiments towards some of the main digital instruments of exchanging support on SNS, in particular posts and various forms of “likes,” as well as the perceived effectiveness of online social support in general. Additionally, it provides some context on how the phenomenon has been impacted by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.