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Abstract

Objective

Informal caregivers of older adults often turn to online communities, such as Reddit, to seek social support but not all support-seeking behaviors yield the desired outcomes. This study investigates how support-seeking strategies employed by informal caregivers of older adults in a selection of posts on Reddit, including directness and emotional expressions, elicit others’ textual and non-textual social support.

Methods

We collected 761 posts and 3504 comments from three subreddits for informal caregivers of older adults using the Reddit application programming interface. Through quantitative content analysis, we examined support-seeking strategies in posts and types of social support in comments. The Kruskal-Wallis test and binary logistic regressions were used to assess how these strategies predicted textual (i.e., informational, emotional, and esteem support in comments) and non-textual support (i.e., votes).

Results

Informal caregivers of older adults predominantly used direct support-seeking strategies and frequently expressed negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and sadness, in their Reddit posts. Direct support-seeking was more likely to elicit informational support but less likely to elicit non-textual and emotional and esteem support in comments compared to indirect support requests. Emotional expressions attracted more non-textual support compared to neutral posts, but different types of emotional expressions did not vary in their effectiveness in eliciting non-textual support. Expressing fear was effective in eliciting both informational and emotional support, while expressing hope and bittersweet were more likely to elicit emotional and esteem support in comments.

Conclusions

Informal caregivers’ emotional expressions serve as effective support-seeking strategies in Reddit caregiver communities, eliciting both textual and non-textual forms of support. Future studies should explore the mechanisms through which specific emotions influence the reception of social support. Additionally, more research is needed on informal caregivers’ supportive communication across different platforms and caregiving contexts to gain a deeper understanding of their support needs.

Keywords

Informal caregivers online communities social sharing of emotions supportive communication social support

Introduction

The global shift toward an aging society has significantly increased the demands placed on informal caregivers—family members and friends who provide unpaid care to older adults with functional or health needs.^1,2 Research has shown that informal caregiving for older adults has become prevalent, with an estimated 37.1 million U.S. citizens providing unpaid care for older adults.³ Similar trends also occur in other countries.⁴ These informal caregivers undertook various responsibilities, including assisting in activities of daily living, making medical appointments, providing social support for older adults, and dealing with logistic issues.⁵ The care and time that informal caregivers dedicate to their care recipients equate to billions of dollars’ worth of service value, which alleviates the pressure on the healthcare system and the economy.^6,7 However, caregiving is often accompanied by multifaceted challenges and stress, especially when there is minimal support available from their social networks. This often leads to adverse physical and psychological effects over time, such as emotional tolls and caregiver burdens, making informal caregivers of older adults a vulnerable population.⁸

To cope with stress, many informal caregivers of older adults turn to online support communities (OSCs) to seek social support from their peers⁹—defined as “the social resources that persons perceive to be available or that are actually provided to them by non-professionals.”¹⁰ These communities are often embedded within various social media platforms, such as Facebook,¹¹ CaringBridge,¹² and Reddit,¹³ and are moderated by peers or professional moderators.¹⁴ A recent scoping review by Huang and Ho¹⁵ analyzed 61 studies on OSCs for informal caregiving, revealing that scholars across disciplines have primarily examined how caregivers exchange various types of social support based on social support theories. By facilitating social support, OSCs have the potential to improve informal caregivers’ psychological health, enhance self-efficacy, reduce stress and burden, and decrease social isolation.^16,17

Despite extensive research documenting the presence and benefits of social support in caregiver OSCs, we know little about whether and how informal caregivers of older adults successfully obtain the support they need. While previous studies have identified the types of support exchanged, they rarely examine whether caregivers’ support-seeking attempts actually elicit desired responses.^18,19 Research from other OSCs suggests that receiving adequate support depends heavily on how support is solicited within messages.^20,21 Yet, in the context of caregivers, our understanding of effective support-seeking strategies remains limited, with only two exceptions. Benson et al.²² found that informal caregivers in Facebook groups primarily used indirect support-seeking through self-disclosure and patient updates rather than direct requests. Liu et al.²³ further suggested that informal caregivers’ self-disclosure of personal experiences elicited more informational support than direct requests in a Chinese Tecent QQ group. These studies, however, mainly focused on non-anonymous platforms, leaving a significant gap in understanding how informal caregivers of older adults seek and obtain social support in anonymous OSCs.

This limitation is especially pronounced in the context of informal caregiving of older adults. The unique stressors of caregiving for senior family members or friends—including emotional distress and social stigma—make anonymous platforms especially valuable for this population.^14,24 Research indicates that anonymity fosters greater self-disclosure about sensitive topics,^25,26 which may encourage more supportive responses from community members.²⁷ For informal caregivers dealing with challenging healthcare activities, family conflicts, or negative emotions about their role, anonymous platforms can provide a safer space to seek support without fear of judgment from their social networks.^14,28 As anonymous OSCs become increasingly popular among informal caregivers, understanding how to effectively seek support in these spaces becomes crucial for supporting this vulnerable population.¹⁴

Reddit has emerged as a particularly important anonymous platform for informal caregivers of older adults seeking social support. Unlike traditional forums, Reddit's community-driven structure creates dedicated “subreddits” where caregivers gather around specific conditions or general caregiving challenges.^13,29 Recent studies document increasing caregiver participation on Reddit, with Shoults et al. identifying over 60,000 caregiver posts across major caregiving subreddits between 2017 and 2021.¹³ Caregivers value Reddit's anonymity for discussing sensitive topics such as caregiver burden, emotional toll, and end-of-life decisions.¹³ Moreover, Reddit's unique affordances have expanded the dynamics of supportive communication among informal caregivers. Users can “upvote” posts to express solidarity and validation without crafting lengthy responses.^30,31 This feature may be especially valuable for time-constrained caregivers who want to show support but lack the time for detailed replies. Despite these distinctive features, no research has yet examined how caregivers’ support seeking elicits both textual and non-textual support on Reddit, making it difficult to determine whether and how Reddit can effectively benefit this informal caregiver population.

To address these gaps, this study examines how informal caregivers of older adults seek social support on Reddit and how their support-seeking strategies elicit both textual and non-textual forms of support by drawing on caregiver research and online support research. In doing so, it advances caregiver research by identifying platform-specific strategies that can enhance support elicitation, providing evidence-based recommendations for community design and moderation tailored to support this vulnerable population. Additionally, it contributes to online support research by offering novel insights into how the interplay of anonymity and non-textual affordances influences supportive communication dynamics in OSCs, thereby deepening our understanding of online supportive communication within informal caregiving contexts.

Social support seeking and provision in online support communities

Seeking social support, involving communicative efforts to elicit supportive responses from others,³² is an effective strategy to help informal caregivers cope with their stress.^33,34 Barbee and Cunningham's sensitive interaction system theory³⁵ provides a framework to understand the dynamic process of supportive communication, categorizing support-seeking strategies into two dimensions: (a) direct/indirect and (b) verbal/non-verbal means.^35,36 The directness dimension alludes to how explicitly the seekers convey their need for support, while the verbal dimension refers to whether they seek support verbally or non-verbally—through words or through other actions (e.g., gestures or expressions in face-to-face contexts).³⁵ In online contexts, where communication typically occurs through written content and digital features (e.g., images, emojis, and other platform-based reactions), the verbal/non-verbal category can also be viewed as textual/non-textual communication. For clarity and consistency, we use the terms “textual” and “non-textual” throughout this article. Empirical studies have mainly examined online support-seeking behaviors according to the directness/indirectness dichotomy.^9,37,38 For example, informal caregivers in OSCs use either direct requests for support by asking for help or indirect conveying the need for support by disclosing stressors and problems.^22,23

Another support-seeking strategy informal caregivers of older adults may adopt in online communities is expressing their emotions. Informal caregivers of older adults often experience highly charged emotions as they care for their loved ones due to the intense and unpredictable nature of caregiving.⁵ To process these emotions, they often share these emotions with the people around them, which engages them in the process of social sharing of emotions (SSEs).^39,40 SSE not only helps individuals regulate their emotions^41–43 but also influences other's thoughts, attitudes, and actions, serving interpersonal functions such as eliciting empathy or support from others.^44–46 Emotional expressions, whether intentional or unintentional, can act as a social support elicitation strategy by influencing how others respond to informal caregivers’ posts.^44,47

Existing research has identified the prevalence of discrete emotion sharing in online communities. According to the discrete emotion models, emotions can be categorized into distinct types based on their specific values and action tendencies.^48,49 Joy signals progress toward a goal and encourages bonding; sadness reflects loss or failure and prompts convalescence; fear signals a threat and encourages revising plans; and anger signals obstacles and prompts rejection.^49,50 In addition to these basic emotions, the importance of mixed emotions—emotional experiences that reflect conflicting feelings—has been recognized. For instance, hope arises when people perceive a chance of improvement in a challenging situation, which may motivate mobilization,⁵⁰ while the bittersweet emotion refers to a feeling of sadness together with happiness that often serves as a memory of good times in the past.⁵¹

Empirical evidence has shown that members commonly expressed a broad range of discrete emotions, including positive, negative, and mixed aspects, in online support or health communities.^52,53 For example, Wang and Wei⁵³ found that cancer survivors have expressed positive emotions like joy, negative emotions like fear, sadness, and anger, and mixed emotions like hope and bittersweet on Twitter. Another study also identified the expression of similar emotions in cancer-related tweets.⁵² The findings suggest that discrete emotions provide a useful framework to capture nuanced emotional expressions in online communities, where individuals often share their feelings to seek social support. While these studies have laid a foundation for understanding users’ emotional expressions in OSCs, including various discrete emotions, we know little about how informal caregivers of older adults express these emotions on Reddit and its effectiveness in eliciting social support from other users.

Social support provision in online communities like Reddit takes two primary forms: textual and non-textual. Textual support refers to textual comments intentionally deployed to aid individuals perceived as in need of assistance.³² The social support behavior code (SSBC) has delineated social support into five types based on their functions, namely informational support, emotional support, esteem support, network support, and tangible support. Informational support refers to providing information, advice, tips, and suggestions for problem solving; emotional support includes efforts to convey empathy, sympathy, encouragement, affection, comfort, and concern; esteem support is compliment and validation that aims to build the seeker's self-worth and self-esteem; network support involves reminders that the person is not alone and providing access to connect and socialize with similar others; tangible support refers to giving tangible assistance, such as money, materials, or actions.⁵⁴ While originally developed for face-to-face contexts, the SSBC framework has been widely adopted by content analysis studies examining social support exchange in text-based communication across online platforms, such as blogs,⁵⁵ microblogs,⁵⁶ forums,^37,57 Facebook,²² and Reddit.⁵⁸

Beyond textual comments, online social support provision has also been documented in the non-textual form, such as paralinguistic digital affordances (PDAs).^59,60 PDAs are in essence lightweight means of communication activated by a single click and represented by a single static icon,⁵⁹ including likes (Instagram and Facebook), favorites (Twitter), and upvotes (Reddit and Imgur). Compared with textual comments, PDAs represent a low-effort yet meaningful way for individuals to support others in online communities.^59,61,62 For instance, Hayes et al.⁵⁹ found that people tend to use PDAs to communicate esteem support (i.e., validation) or emotional support (i.e., sympathy and understanding) toward a poster who discloses negative experiences and feelings. To have a comprehensive understanding of how informal caregivers of older adults provide social support on Reddit, this study will also examine both textual comments and PDAs (i.e., votes) as means of social support provision.

Prior research has provided evidence of how support-seeking strategies relate to different types of social support in online communities either in textual or non-textual forms. According to the sensitive interaction system theory, the directness of support seeking significantly influences the responses from potential support providers; support seekers who adopt a direct strategy are more likely to receive supportive responses than those using indirect strategies.³⁵ A direct support request explicitly shows a person's desires and needs for social support, which in turn prompts others to provide social support to the support seeker.⁶³ In contrast, indirect support-seeking messages, such as alluding to one's problems or feelings, may create ambiguity about the support seeker's actual support needs. This may decrease the likelihood of receiving support or even lead to unsupportive responses (e.g., disapproval, rejection, and avoidance).⁶⁴ In the context of online communities, however, a recent study found that the number of PDAs did not differ across direct and indirect requests for support on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.⁶⁵ The inconsistent evidence highlights the need to investigate how directness in support-seeking messages elicits PDAs in social media communities like Reddit.

Regarding more nuanced relationships between the directness in support seeking and specific types of social support in textual comments, limited research has been conducted. Three exceptions are content analysis studies on supportive communication in online health forums.^9,23,37 Liu et al.⁹ found that posts directly asking for support in an online alcohol use disorder forum were more likely to receive informational support and network support in textual comments, whereas indirect support seeking was more likely to receive emotional support. Similar findings were reported in a study on a forum related to COVID-19.³⁷ In contrast, Liu et al.²³ found that informal caregivers’ self-disclosure of personal experiences elicited more informational support than direct requests in a QQ group for informal caregiving. Given these conflicting results and the lack of research on supportive dynamics within Reddit caregiver communities, further investigation is needed to assess the effectiveness of informal caregivers’ support-seeking strategies in eliciting various types of social support, including informational, emotional, network, esteem, and tangible support on Reddit.⁶⁶

Emotional expressions, as another social support elicitation strategy, also play a role in soliciting different types of social support in online communities. According to the process of online SSE, people's emotional expressions in online communities signal their need for understanding and feedback, which facilitates providers’ engagement in two responses—cognitive and affective feedback.³⁹ Affective feedback typically involves different forms of emotional (e.g., understanding and empathy) and esteem support (e.g., validation and acknowledgment).³⁹ Affective feedback can alleviate negative emotional experiences that the seeker might be experiencing through negative emotion sharing. It can also reinforce and sustain positive emotions through positive experience sharing, a process known as capitalization.^40,67 Cognitive feedback, on the other hand, involves helping the seeker process their emotion by providing informational support, such as opinions, advice, and suggestions.³⁹

Despite these theoretical distinctions, the relationships between emotional expressions and types of social support in OSCs show varying patterns. Liu et al.,⁹ for instance, found that posts expressing positive emotions were more likely to elicit emotional support, while posts sharing negative emotions tended to receive informational support. Posts with mixed emotions were more likely to solicit network support. Another study on cancer-related communities on Twitter revealed that neither positive (i.e., happiness) nor negative emotions (i.e., fear, anger, and sadness) were associated with the provision of informational or emotional support. Instead, the mixed emotion of hope positively predicted the provision of these two types of support.⁵² Additionally, emotional expressions have shown inconsistent effects in eliciting PDAs. While some studies found that negative emotions receive fewer PDAs despite prompting other forms of support,⁶⁵ others demonstrate more complex relationships. For instance, users in cancer-related communities on Twitter were more likely to offer support (i.e., in the form of likes) for tweets expressing positive emotion like joy, negative emotion like sadness, and mixed emotion like hope, as compared with other emotions such as fear, anger, and bittersweet.⁵³ Therefore, it is still unclear how informal caregivers’ emotional expressions elicit various types of social support on Reddit.

Building on the above rationale, this study aims to understand how informal caregivers of older adults use different support-seeking strategies, including directness in support requests and emotional expressions, on Reddit. In addition, we examine how these support-seeking strategies predict the provision of both PDAs and informational, emotional, esteem, network, and tangible support in comments on Reddit. A research model of supportive communication for this study can be seen in Figure 1. Specifically, we ask the following four research questions:

Figure 1.

Research model of supportive communication on Reddit.

RQ1: What are the prevalent support-seeking strategies (i.e., direct requests for support vs. indirect requests for support) that informal caregivers of older adults use in their posts to elicit social support on Reddit?

RQ2: What are the prevalent emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, joy, fear, hope, bittersweet, and neutral) shared by informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit?

RQ3: How do informal caregivers of older adults provide (a) social support in the form of PDAs (i.e., votes) and (b) different types of social support in their comments (i.e., informational, emotional, esteem, network, and tangible support in textual comments) in response to posts varying in the directness in support seeking?

RQ4: How do informal caregivers of older adults provide (a) social support in the form of PDAs (i.e., votes) and (b) different types of social support in their comments (i.e., informational, emotional, esteem, network, and tangible support in textual comments) in response to posts that express different emotions?

Method

To identify the different types of support-seeking strategies employed by informal caregivers of older adults and support provided by other caregivers in online communities, a quantitative content analysis approach was used to analyze their supportive communication patterns on Reddit. Each discussion thread on Reddit, which included the top-level posts and their corresponding comments, served as the unit of analysis.

Data collection

For this study, we limited our analysis to subreddits for informal caregivers of the general older adult population, based on two primary reasons. First, this scope aligns with this study's focus on informal caregivers of older adults. Prior research on Reddit communities has predominantly examined either the general caregiver population¹³ or disease-specific groups, such as those caring for individuals with Alzheimer's disease or related dementias.²⁹ In contrast, there is limited empirical attention to the unique support dynamics among informal caregivers of general older adults, who often encounter multifaceted challenges related to aging. In response to recent calls for more research on the support needs of informal caregivers of older adults,^68,69 this study aims to examine how these caregivers exchange social support on Reddit. Second, this targeted scope enhances the study's methodological rigor. Including subreddits dedicated to specific diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's and cancer) could introduce confounding variables associated with different caregiver stressors.⁷⁰ Excluding these disease-specific communities allows for a clearer examination of support-seeking behaviors among informal caregivers of older adults. Overall, focusing on informal caregivers of the general older adult population provides valuable insights into the support needs of this large and understudied group, especially amidst ongoing global aging trends.

In our search, we utilized keywords such as “aging/older/elder” + “care/caregiver” to search for subreddits that discuss the experiences of caring for older adults, and then we checked the description of the subreddit and its content. The subreddits that were established for informal caregivers or family members of older adults were included for data collection and analysis, including r/AgingParents, r/eldercare, r/elderlycare. The subreddit r/AgingParents is one of the largest subreddit, a 4% top subreddit within Reddit, discussing the experiences of caring for aging parents. The other two subreddits were designed for informal caregivers who might not have a parent–child relationship with their care recipient.

The Reddit application programming interface (API) was utilized to collect posts and their associated comments from these three subreddits. Reddit API is an official set of tools provided by Reddit that enables developers to programmatically access and interact with the platform. Through the API, researchers can access publicly available posts, comments, and user profile information.⁷¹ Since the Reddit API limits retrieval to the 1000 most recent posts, we gathered up to 1000 of the latest posts from each subreddit on August 6, 2023. For subreddits with fewer than 1000 posts available at the time, all existing posts were retrieved. We also extracted the number of votes that each post received. Posts that were not written by a caregiver and posts that discussed irrelevant content, such as advertisements or news, were excluded from the final sample. Before collecting data, we received approval from the integrity review board of the affiliated institution under the exempt review category. Publicly available datasets, like the Reddit posts used in this study, fall under this category. To ensure individuals’ privacy, any identifiable information was removed from the collected posts and comments.

From this process, we ended up with a dataset of 1572 posts with 6984 corresponding comments. Using Microsoft Excel, we did a simple random sampling from this dataset, which is a widely accepted method for human-based content analysis.⁷² Simple random sampling has been found to be effective in creating a representative sample for online media content compared to other sampling methods.⁷³ The randomization was done due to the number of comments that were especially large (6000+) and given our manpower and timeframe constraints. To ensure that we were working with a good sample that is representative to the population, we have set the parameters to be at the following level: 95% confidence interval with a ±3% margin of error when determining our sample size. The final sample consisted of 761 posts and 3504 comments in total.

Coding scheme

We developed a codebook consisting of support-seeking strategies in posts and social support provided in comments. To identify the support-seeking strategies utilized in caregiving-related posts, we drew on the classification of directness in support-seeking strategies^38,74 and discrete emotion sharing⁵³ in previous work. We also preliminarily examined a sample of 100 posts to identify any emerging codes in our data. The final coding scheme for directness in support seeking consisted of two categories: directly requesting for support and indirectly requesting for support. Direct support requests were coded as 1, while indirect support requests were coded as 2. Emotional expressions were categorized as anger, sadness, fear, joy, bittersweet, hope, and neutral, each assigned a value from 1 to 7, respectively. Each post was assigned one mutually exclusive code for directness and emotional expressions, given that we aimed to identify the primary support-seeking strategy and specific emotion shared in each post.

For comments, we reviewed a random sample of 100 comments for their social support types. Guided by Cutrona and Suhr's⁵⁴ SSBC framework, we identified five types of social support, including informational support, emotional support, network support, esteem support, and tangible support. As each comment tends to involve multiple social supports, these types of social support were coded as 1 (present) or 0 (absent). This approach was adopted to accurately capture the variety of social support types present in a single post, which is frequently adopted by previous research on online social support.^21,37 A detailed explanation of the coding scheme, including the definitions and examples of codes, can be seen in Table 1S in the supplementary material.

Table 1.

Coding scheme and frequencies of support-seeking strategies and emotional expression modes of post.

Category	Description	Frequency	Percentage
Directness (n = 761)
Direct request for support	Asks explicitly for opinion, information, or guidance about an issue, such as how or what one “should” do in a situation and confirmation from anyone who faced the same situation	571	75.0
Indirect request for support	Describes the situation or problem faced or shares a story, point of view or information stemming from personal experience without explicitly asking for opinion, information, guidance, or experiential confirmation	190	25.0
Emotional expression (n = 761)
Anger	Statements communicating anger or frustration	132	17.3
Sadness	Statements communicating the feelings of sadness, despair, or despondency	80	10.5
Fear	Statements communicating fear or anxiety; a response to a threat of harm, physical, or psychological.	155	20.4
Joy	Statements communicating a feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction	6	0.8
Bittersweet	Statement communicating a feeling a sadness twinged with happiness	9	1.2
Hope	Statement that express yearning for relief from negative conditions, focusing on the positive, being optimistic or having a positive outlook; encouraging others to be positive or be hopeful	17	2.2
Neutral	A state in which no emotions can be detected	362	47.6

Coding procedures

Two student assistants, majoring in social sciences with proficiency in English, were recruited as coders for this study. Before starting the coding, the coders attended three training sessions, each lasting 2 h, to review the codebook, discuss the definition of each code, and examine representative excerpts. After all the rules for the codes were clarified, the coders initiated the process of reaching intercoder reliability. To gain intercoder reliability, two coders coded a separate set of 150 posts (approximately 10% of the whole set of posts) and 684 corresponding comments. Each post was reviewed to identify its primary support-seeking strategy and emotional expression, while comments were coded for the presence or absence of multiple types of social support.

For codes that had not generated acceptable intercoder reliability, the two coders discussed discrepancies by reviewing the definition together and refining the codebook where necessary to ensure consistent application. After recoding, the two coders managed to reach high levels of intercoder reliability (K = .85, .80–.89). We used the tidycomm (version 0.4.1) package in R to calculate the intercoder reliability.

Data analysis

We utilized SPSS 29 for data analysis. First, descriptive statistics were computed for all key constructs, including support-seeking directness, emotional expressions, and different types of social support, with their frequencies and percentages examined. No missing data were found.

Since the assumption of homogeneity of variances in analysis of variance was violated, as indicated by the homogeneity of variance test, we conducted the Kruskal-Wallis test to examine how the independent variables—specifically, support-seeking directness and emotional expressions—predict the number of votes (dependent variable). Post hoc comparisons were performed using Dunn's method with a Bonferroni correction to adjust for multiple comparisons, allowing us to compare differences in the number of votes across various support-seeking and emotional expression groups.

A series of binary logistic regressions were conducted to analyze how the independent variables—support-seeking directness and emotional expressions—predict the presence of different types of social support in the comments (dependent variables). Before conducting the regressions, multicollinearity was assessed, and all models met the assumption. Since the predictor variables were categorical, the assumption of linearity was not tested. In the logistic regression analyses, two independent variables (i.e., support-seeking directness and emotional expressions) were entered simultaneously, with each type of social support—informational, emotional, esteem, network, and tangible support—analyzed as a separate dependent variable.

Results

Support-seeking directness and emotional expressions in posts (RQ1 and RQ2)

Table 1 shows the definitions and frequencies of support-seeking strategies and emotional expression modes of post. In the overall sample (N = 761), we found that most informal caregivers of older adults expressed their support needs directly (n = 571, 75.0%) by requesting opinion and information, advice, and situation comparison. Almost one in four posts were indirect in support seeking (n = 190, 25.0%) by expressing the source of distress or sharing personal experiences and stories without explicitly requesting social support. This suggests that direct support-seeking strategies were predominantly seen on Reddit caregiver communities compared to indirect ones.

In terms of the specific emotions expressed, posts that did not explicitly express any emotions accounted for 47.6% of the sample (n = 362), while emotional posts represented 52.4% (n = 399). The results suggest that emotional expressions were prevalent among informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit. They mostly expressed negative emotions such as fear (n = 155, 20.4%), anger (n = 132, 17.3%), and sadness (n = 80, 10.5%). A few posts expressed positive emotions, joy (n = 6, 0.8%), and mixed emotions, such as bittersweet (n = 9, 1.2%) and hope (n = 17, 2.2%).

Provision of different types of social support in response to support-seeking directness (RQ3)

RQ3 was concerned with the votes and five types of social support received by posts that utilized support-seeking strategies varying in directness. A Kruskal-Wallis H test showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the number of votes between the direct and indirect support-seeking groups, χ²(1) = 142.395, p < .001, with a mean rank vote number of 325.37 for direct support seeking and 544.75 for indirect support seeking. Therefore, posts using an indirect support-seeking strategy received more votes than posts directly requesting support.

Regarding the provision of social support in comments, the results show that most of the social support provided on Reddit was informational support (n = 3158, 90.1%), followed by emotional support (n = 690, 19.7%), and esteem support (n = 179, 5.1%). Only a few comments provided network support (n = 41, 1.2%) and tangible support (n = 3, 0.1%). Given that esteem and tangible support were less typically exchanged on Reddit, we excluded them from binary logistic regression. The results (Table 2) showed that direct requests for support increased the likelihood of the reception of information support in comments (Exp(B) = 2.72, p < .001) compared with indirect support seeking. However, direct requests for support decreased the likelihood of eliciting emotional support (Exp(B) = 0.40, p < .001) and esteem support (Exp(B) = 0.30, p < .001).

Table 2.

Logistic regression of directness of support request and emotional expression on social support received.

	Informational support				Emotional support				Esteem support
	B (SE)	Exp (B)	95% CI		B (SE)	Exp(B)	95% CI		B (SE)	Exp (B)	95% CI
	B (SE)	Exp (B)	Lower	Upper	B (SE)	Exp(B)	Lower	Upper	B (SE)	Exp (B)	Lower	Upper
Directness (reference group = indirect support seeking)
Direct request	1.00 (0.13)	2.72***	0.74	1.25	−0.91 (0.10)	0.40***	−1.11	−0.72	−1.22 (0.19)	0.30***	−1.60	−0.87
Emotion (reference group = neutral)
Anger	0.02 (0.17)	1.02	−0.32	0.36	0.45 (0.14)	1.56***	0.18	0.70	−0.55 (0.26)	0.58*	−1.07	−0.10
Sadness	−0.35 (0.18)	0.70	−0.70	0.02	1.12 (0.14)	3.07***	0.84	1.41	−0.17 (0.27)	0.84	−0.79	0.32
Fear	0.46 (0.18)	1.58*	0.10	0.84	0.66 (0.13)	1.93***	0.39	0.90	−0.07 (.23)	0.94	−0.53	0.35
Joy	−0.96 (0.46)	0.38*	−1.73	0.15	0.84 (0.44)	2.31	−0.19	1.69	0.55 (0.64)	1.74	−18.64	1.62
Bittersweet	−1.78 (0.32)	0.17***	−2.36	−1.18	1.48 (0.31)	4.41***	0.91	2.08	1.27 (0.39)	3.55**	0.39	1.98
Hope	−0.82 (0.28)	0.44**	−1.34	−0.24	0.70 (0.26)	2.01**	0.17	1.19	0.98 (0.33)	2.66**	0.27	1.61

Note. Exp (B) = predicted change in odds for a unit increase in the predictor; CI = confidence interval.

*P < .05. **P < .01. ***P < .001.

Provision of different types of social support in response to emotional expressions (RQ4)

RQ4 investigated how different emotional expression modes in posts elicited votes and various types of social support in comments. A Kruskal-Wallis H test showed that emotional expressions in posts significantly predicted the number of votes, χ²(6) = 123.160, p < .001. The mean rank vote number is 279.96 for neutral, 489.67 for anger, 496.88 for sadness, 417.02 for fear, 616.20 for joy, 640.39 for bittersweet, and 574.15 for hope. Post hoc comparisons using Dunn's method with a Bonferroni correction for multiple tests revealed that posts expressing anger (p < .001), sadness (p < .001), fear (p < .001), joy (p = .014), bittersweet (p < .001), and hope (p < .001) received more votes than posts that did not express any emotions. However, there was no significant difference in the effectiveness of eliciting votes across different emotional expression modes.

Regarding the reception of social support in comments, the results (Table 2) showed that expressing fear (Exp(B) = 1.58, p = .01) was more likely to elicit informational support compared with expressing neutral or other emotions. In contrast, expressing joy (Exp(B) = 0.38, p = .04), bittersweet (Exp(B) = 0.17, p < .001), and hope (Exp(B) = 0.44, p = .003) were less likely to elicit informational support. Except for joy, all other emotional expressions, including anger (Exp(B) = 1.56, p < .001), sadness (Exp(B) = 3.07, p < .001), fear (Exp(B) = 1.93, p < .001), bittersweet (Exp(B) = 4.41, p < .001), and hope (Exp(B) = 2.01, p = .007) were more likely to receive emotional support in comments. For esteem support, expressing mixed emotions, such as bittersweet (Exp(B) = 3.55, p = .001) and hope (Exp(B) = 2.66, p = .003), were more likely to elicit this type of support in comments. However, expressing anger (Exp(B) = 0.58, p = .03) was less likely to elicit esteem support.

Discussion

In our study, we analyzed the prevailing support-seeking strategies, including directness in support requests and emotional expressions, and their capabilities in eliciting various forms of social support in online communities for informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit. The results demonstrate that direct requests for support were more often adopted by informal caregivers of older adults in support seeking compared to indirect requests for support. More than half of the support-seeking posts expressed emotions, with a majority expressing negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and sadness. Additionally, these support-seeking strategies varied in their effectiveness in eliciting textual and non-textual social support, demonstrating nuanced relationships between support seeking and support provision on Reddit.

This study revealed that direct requests for support, including requests for opinion, information, advice, or experiential knowledge, were the more popular support-seeking strategies used by informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit. The finding differs from previous research on online supportive communication that found that indirect support seeking through self-disclosure was more prevalent compared with direct requests for support among informal caregivers in Facebook support groups.²² This might be due to the anonymity feature present in Reddit, which shields them from being identified and judged, and creates a safe environment for them to seek support directly without fear of judgement.⁷⁵ In addition to direct requests for support, we found that caregivers also indirectly request social support by disclosing the source of distress, such as their problems and feelings, and their own experiences in their posts. This indicates that caregivers also relied on self-disclosure, an intentional behavior of revealing personal information, experiences, and feelings,²² to seek social support in online communities. These indirect seeking behaviors could help others understand the seekers’ situations and psychological states while protecting their self-esteem and face.⁶⁴ By validating the directness/indirectness dimension in support-seeking posts, this study extends our understanding of how informal caregivers initiate supportive communication that an anonymous platform such as Reddit facilitates.

The prevalence of emotional expressions in support-seeking highlights the patterns of SSE on Reddit. Findings from our study differ from previous research that found the prevalence of positive and mixed emotion expressions on Twitter.^52,53 Posts by informal caregivers of older adults in our study mostly expressed negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and sadness, with very few conveying positive emotions. One potential explanation is that the anonymous environment on Reddit further encourages caregivers’ disclosures of their authentic emotions without considering the social norm and judgment of others, demonstrating a pattern of online disinhibition.^27,76 In the context of informal caregiving, the burdens and responsibilities associated with caregiving often lead to significant stress, frustration, and sadness in caregivers’ daily lives.^8,77 These negative experiences may drive caregivers to share negative emotions in online anonymous communities for venting and social support. Therefore, there is a need to consider both the psychological needs of members and affordances of platforms when investigating online SSE patterns.

There are also several noteworthy findings with regard to the relationship between directness in support seeking and various types of social support in Reddit caregiver communities. Unlike prior research on online caregiver communities in Chinese QQ groups,²³ we found that informal caregivers’ direct requests for support on Reddit were more likely to elicit informational support, while their indirect requests were more likely to elicit emotional support. This pattern aligns with empirical evidence from other health-related anonymous OSCs such as alcohol use disorder forums.^9,37 As suggested by Liu et al.,³⁷ support seekers’ direct requests for support facilitate others’ understanding of their needs, which enables the provision of specific information or suggestions to seekers. The implicit expression of support needs in indirect strategies, by contrast, prevents support providers from offering specific informational support.³⁷ However, indirect seeking strategies often involve detailed self-disclosure of personal experiences and feelings, which reveal the seekers’ psychological states. Thus, they encourage the provision of encouragement or comfort to ease the seekers’ distress. Given the inconsistent findings regarding the effectiveness of directness in eliciting informational and emotional support within OSCs for informal caregivers, further research across different anonymous platforms is needed to better understand these relationships.

Our finding also extends existing research on OSCs for informal caregiving by suggesting that informal caregivers’ indirect requests are also more likely to elicit esteem support. Esteem support, usually in the form of validation and acknowledgment, is a popular type of social support on subreddits for informal caregivers. For instance, users commented, “You’re a very thoughtful sibling and I think you’re absolutely right in that they will see your contribution as one less thing to have to worry about…” The positive relationship between indirect requests and the presence of esteem support corresponds with the social penetration hypothesis that self-disclosure fosters perceptions of intimacy and trust and leads to social benefits for the disclosers.⁷⁸ In online communities, such benefits often include validation and acknowledgement. Additionally, indirect support-seeking strategies elicited more non-textual support, as shown by the higher frequency of PDA it receives. PDAs, as conceptualized in current research, can be construed as a form of esteem and emotional support. Therefore, our result suggests that self-disclosure is an effective strategy in eliciting both textual and non-textual forms of emotional and esteem support in anonymous OSCs for informal caregiving.

The findings of how emotional expressions in posts impacted the types of social support received in Reddit caregiver communities also advance knowledge about informal caregivers’ online supportive communication. Compared with posts that did not express any emotions, those with social SSEs tended to receive more PDAs and emotional support in comments. The finding confirmed the premise of online SSE proposed by Rodríguez Hidalgo et al.³⁹ that online SSEs signals a need to be listened to and receive feedback, which in turn elicits affective feedback from recipients, including emotional support. However, the current theoretical framework only accounts for textual forms of feedback. As such, the finding of this study extends this theoretical framework of online social sharing by identifying both textual (i.e. emotional support in comments) and non-textual (i.e. votes) forms of affective feedback as a response to online sharing of emotions among informal caregivers of older adults.

Looking closer into the relationships between specific emotional expressions and social support, we found that informal caregivers’ various emotion expressions did not have differences in eliciting votes. Our finding differs from existing research that identified variations in the number of PDAs across different emotional expressions in other OSCs.^53,65 The function of votes on Reddit and the context of informal caregiving may explain these discrepancies. On Reddit, receiving votes indicates how well the content aligns with community values and receives approval from members.⁷⁹ The lack of variation in votes across emotional expressions suggests that these emotions may all converge with the community's norms or values and may be equally appreciated when they reflect shared caregiving experiences. Empirical evidence has suggested that the impacts of discrete emotional expressions on the number of votes on Reddit often depends on the context in which they are shared.^79,80 In subreddits for informal caregivers of older adults, members are likely to share similar stressors and emotional experiences.⁵ As a result, emotional sharing—regardless of the specific emotion—likely aligns with collective experiences and receives comparable support in the form of votes. These findings suggest the importance of examining emotional expressions within specific contexts. Future research should investigate whether and how different types of emotional expressions vary in their effectiveness at eliciting votes across diverse caregiving situations on Reddit.

Another novel finding is that the reception of esteem support depends on emotional expressions in posts. Specifically, expressing mixed emotions, including hope and bittersweet, was more likely to elicit esteem support compared with other emotions. In our data, caregivers expressed hope when they would like to change the status quo in challenging situations and bittersweet when they would like to remember good memories of their sick loved ones. These conflicting emotions reflect seekers’ desire to become a qualified caregiver while gaining relief from negative conditions, which may encourage others to show validation and acknowledgement to promote seekers’ positive psychological adjustment. This aligns with prior research on informal caregivers’ needs, which highlights that informal caregivers of older adults often experience both positive and negative aspects of their role^8,81 while requiring recognition of their caregiver identity and efforts.⁸² Given the limited understanding of mixed emotions’ roles in informal caregivers’ supportive communication, future research should further examine how sharing such emotions predicts social support reception in OSCs for informal caregiving and the underlying mechanisms.

Previous research found that posts featuring a high level of threat of disease were more likely to receive informational support.²¹ Similarly, this study indicates that expressing fear in support-seeking posts was more likely to elicit cognitive feedback (i.e., informational support) compared to expressing neutral or other emotions. Messages expressing fear typically suggest that the seeker is threatened by danger and in a state of uncertainty regarding how to cope with a situation.⁵⁵ In the context of this study, informal caregivers of older adults usually expressed fear and uncertainty on their loved one's declined health status and behavioral problems.⁵ This perceived threat can elicit other informal caregivers’ empathy and subsequently lead to their prosocial behaviors such as providing information or suggestions to help alleviate this fear. Combined with the positive relationship between expressing fear and the presence of emotional support, the findings of this study suggest that expression of fear may be an effective strategy among informal caregivers of older adults in eliciting different types of social support on Reddit.

Theoretical and practical implications

This study advances research on OSCs for informal caregiving by providing critical insights into how platform affordances of Reddit—specifically, anonymity and PDAs—influence supportive communication among informal caregivers in OSCs. First, by examining the prevalence of direct support requests and emotional expressions in Reddit posts by informal caregivers of older adults, our findings deepen understanding of how this population initiates and engages in supportive interactions within anonymous OSCs. The anonymous feature appears to encourage direct requests for support and expressions of negative emotions, which contrasts with prior research on support-seeking behaviors on other identifiable platforms.²² This suggests that future research should further investigate how affordances like anonymity in OSCs shape the support-seeking strategies of informal caregivers and how these features impact the types and effectiveness of support received.

Second, this study is among the first to explore how different support-seeking strategies employed by informal caregivers of older adults—including directness and emotional expressions—elicit both textual and non-textual forms of social support on Reddit. Our results show that direct support-seeking tends to elicit more informational support in comments, while indirect strategies such as self-disclosure are more effective in eliciting non-verbal support and emotional and esteem support in comments. These roles of direct and indirect support-seeking diverge from prior research on other identifiable OSCs for informal caregivers,²³ highlighting the need for a closer examination of how support-seeking strategies relate to different types of social support across diverse platform contexts. Another key direction for future studies involves examining the role of PDAs as a form of non-textual support. It is critical to differentiate the meaning and functions of PDAs from emotional and esteem support in textual comments. This will help refine theoretical models and guide the development of more effective online support systems for informal caregivers.

Third, our findings reveal that emotional expressions serve as a vital strategy to elicit votes and emotional support—an area previously underexplored in research on online support among informal caregivers. By identifying the roles of discrete emotions expressed in Reddit caregiver communities, this study sets a foundation for future research to investigate how emotional expressions influence the type and strength of social support received. A promising direction involves examining whether and how different emotional expressions—such as hope, bittersweet feelings, or fear—vary in their effectiveness at eliciting votes and support across diverse caregiving contexts.^79,80 Notably, more research is needed to understand how and why mixed emotions, like bittersweet and hope, influence social support dynamics in OSCs.

Additionally, this study provides insights for researchers interested in examining how informal caregivers and other populations exchange social support on social media. By applying a quantitative content analysis approach, we can better understand the dynamics of online support seeking and exchange across various platforms. However, researchers should be cautious about generalizing findings from Reddit—a highly anonymous platform—to social media environments that offer lower levels of anonymity, such as Facebook and Twitter. The anonymity afforded by Reddit may encourage users to share more authentic experiences and express negative emotions more freely, potentially making direct support seeking and negative emotional expressions more salient in these contexts. Future research can adapt our coding scheme and analytic procedures to account for the unique features and affordances of each social media platform, thereby deepening our understanding of online support exchanges in diverse contexts. Furthermore, researchers should carefully consider ethical issues when collecting and analyzing data from social media communities, particularly on platforms that are publicly accessible or offer less user anonymity.

The findings also have significant practical implications for informal caregivers who are a member of OSCs and community managers or moderators on Reddit. The findings can guide informal caregivers of older adults on how to effectively utilize Reddit communities for social support. First, given that indirect support seeking, particularly through self-disclosure, effectively elicits emotional and esteem support, caregivers can improve their chances of receiving meaningful assistance by sharing personal experiences and caregiving challenges in detail. This approach helps others better understand their situation and fosters empathetic responses.^78,83 Second, the study finds that expressions of fear tend to elicit informational and emotional support, while mixed emotions such as hope and bittersweet feelings are more likely to attract acknowledgment or compliments. Informal caregivers can intentionally express these specific emotions to elicit the type of support most relevant to their needs—sharing fears to receive advice and encouragement or expressing hope to gain encouragement.

Our findings also benefit Reddit platform designers and moderators by informing how supportive communication can be encouraged and facilitated. First, the prominence of direct support requests underscores the importance of maintaining platform features like anonymity, which facilitate explicit and open expression of support needs.²⁷ Such features seem to encourage caregivers to seek help openly and receive validation from community members.^14,28 Second, because emotional expressions such as fear, hope, and bittersweet feelings influence the support received, moderators can foster a community culture that values emotional disclosures. This can be achieved through community guidelines, prompts that encourage emotional sharing, and recognition of empathetic responses, which can promote supportive interactions in online communities.⁸⁴ While these insights are promising, further research is needed to determine how they can be effectively applied in moderation strategies or support interventions across other online caregiver communities beyond Reddit.

Limitations and future studies

There are several limitations to be considered. First, our investigation only focused on supportive communication on Reddit, one of the most popular online forums with anonymity affordance. Given that caregivers may use different online communities simultaneously, future studies should investigate caregivers’ support exchange behaviors across various platforms. Second, our research is limited by its focus on textual messages only and is unable to identify the non-textual strategies used in support seeking. As such, future research should also include and analyze non-textual messages, such as images and emojis. Third, our research did not include responses to comments and more conversational turns in each thread in our data collection. Future studies could consider examining more phases, including support seeking, support provision, and support seekers’ feedback, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of online supportive communication or online social sharing. Fourth, we examined how primary support-seeking strategies and emotional expressions in posts elicit different forms of social support. Given that a single post may involve multiple strategies and emotions, future research should aim to recognize and record all support-seeking strategies and emotional expressions present in posts. Furthermore, it should explore how the interplay of these strategies and emotions influences the types and quality of social support elicited in comments.

Conclusion

To better understand the process of supportive communication among informal caregivers of older adults in OSCs, this study investigates social support-seeking strategies, including directness in support requests and emotional expressions, and their relationships with textual and non-textual social responses received by caregivers on Reddit. The findings indicate that caregivers primarily utilize direct strategies and express negative emotions to seek social support from peers on Reddit. Furthermore, compared to direct support requests, posts utilizing self-disclosure strategies or expressing emotions elicit more votes, emotional and esteem support. Expressing fear is found to be the most effective in eliciting informational and emotional support, while disclosing mixed emotions, such as hope and bittersweet, tends to receive more esteem support in comments. We believe our study's findings can provide a critical foundation for future research in online supportive communication and inform studies on informal caregivers.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-dhj-10.1177_20552076251376537 - Supplemental material for Supportive communication patterns among informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit: A content analysis

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-dhj-10.1177_20552076251376537 for Supportive communication patterns among informal caregivers of older adults on Reddit: A content analysis by Nova Mengxia Huang, Bryan Timothy and Shirley S. Ho in DIGITAL HEALTH

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Nova Mengxia Huang

Bryan Timothy

Shirley S. Ho

Ethical approval

Data collection has been approved by the Institutional Review Board.

Contributorship

NH designed the study,wrote the introduction,method,results,discussion parts,and revised the paper. BT collected data and wrote the literature review part. SSH provided funding,designed the study,and edited the paper.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article: This research is supported by the Ministry of Education,Singapore,under its Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant(RG111/22).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Guarantor

SSH.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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