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Abstract: Providing social support to others in need is an act fundamentally rooted in kindness. Despite such good intentions, not all support provision attempts yield positive outcomes. This talk will spotlight the role of communication in delivering (in)effective emotional support. We will discuss the features of (un)helpful emotional support messages, mechanisms proposed to bring about these effects, and the implications of communication technologies. The talk will conclude with some best practices for providing kind emotional support.
About the Speaker: Steve Rains is a Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona. His research is situated in the areas of health communication, social influence, and communication and technology. He is interested in better understanding how and why messages influence people, particularly in health contexts and when using communication technologies. His work in recent years has primarily focused on social support, though he routinely studies digital coping, incivility, persuasion resistance, and related topics. He is especially interested in leveraging computational social science techniques to explore the dynamic communication processes involved in these phenomena.