Social Support Mediated by Technology. A Netnographic Study of an Online Community for Mothers

Abstract

New mothers experience social isolation, and they sometimes lack experience in interacting withtheir babies. Social support accessed via information and communication technologies (ICTs) can helpmitigate such difficulties. Social media groups, in particular, offer opportunities for interacting with oth-er mothers, thus locating an alternative and potentially powerful source of support. In this study, wedescribe such an online community of mothers in Romania, aiming at capturing the mechanisms of so-cial support in the group, and also, schematically, the changing norms of motherhood they are relatedto. The paper expands on a four-dimensional analysis of social support – informational, emotional, af-firmational, and instrumental components (Langfort et al., 1997; Leger & LeTourneau, 2015). It thenintroduces the results of the netnography we conducted in the context of a three-week data gatheringperiod in the observed community. We suggest that the physiognomy of support we observed is relat-ed to changing normative models of motherhood in this Eastern-European nation. In helping each oth-er, the mothers we observed also expressed their difference from older generations, and their personaland professional aspirations.