Abstract
This study distinguishes perceptions of, preferences for, and outcomes related to people’s social ties online. It expands understanding of when and why using social network sites (SNSs) provides people with several types of supportive communication by integrating users’ social capital and preference for weak tie support. Prior research is synthesized and extended to build a heuristic model of social ties and supportive communication in SNSs that considers network-based variables (i.e., social capital, preference for weak ties) as mechanisms that link the use of SNSs to the supportive messages people receive. A community sample (
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
