Antecedents and Consequences of Emotional Disclosure in Social Media: A Case of Facebook

摘要

As a specific form of self-disclosure, emotional disclosure focuses on the expression and communication of a personal emotional experience. Social media have provided a new platform for emotional disclosure. Given the structural specificity and diversity of social media (SM), it is important to understand if the amounts and kinds of emotions shared on SM platforms differ from those in real life (RF) or simply extend and reflect them. In addition, these proposed differences in sharing emotionally charged messages in SM are expected to influence the extent of their virality (probability of being re-shared) and popularity (numbers of comments and likes). Furthermore, few studies have addressed the effects of personal and social factors on emotional disclosure in social networks, and compared those to RL situations. Therefore, the study intends to answer three questions: (1) What are the differences between emotional disclosure on FB and RL? 2) What are the differences in the virality of positive vs. negative emotional disclosure on Facebook (FB)? and 3) How do perceived social support and the Big 5 personality traits affect the emotional disclosure on FB compared to RL?