Authors
Pengfei Zhao
Publication date
2020
Institution
The University of Arizona
Description
People often feel the need to disclose their experiences and feelings after experiencing negative events and emotions. Social networking sites (SNSs) offer unprecedented opportunities for broadcasting self-disclosure. However, questions regarding under what conditions, motivated by what goals, and which groups of people tend to post distressing information on SNSs have received insufficient scholarly attention. Rooted in the functional approach of self-disclosure, the current study investigated how network closeness, perceived SNS affordances (ie, network accessibility, visibility, and visibility control), and depressive symptoms are related to broadcasting distress disclosure tendencies on SNSs via disclosure goals (ie, support-seeking and emotion expression goals). Working with 398 college students, this study found that network closeness and depressive symptoms were indirectly associated with distress …