Multi-Actor Supportive Communication and the Emergence of Solidarity in Online Communities: A Situated Social Exchange Framework

This essay proposes that studying the emergence of solidarity through multi-actor supportive communication offers a useful lens for understanding the increasingly complex structures, dynamics, and communal nature of supportive communication in online communities. Drawing on research of social exchange, online community affordance, and social support type, the essay explores the links between multi-actor supportive communication patterns and solidarity experiences in online communities. It develops three propositions that connect four forms of exchange—reciprocal, negotiated, generalized, and productive—to the experiences of solidarity, moderated by affordance and support type as key communication-situational factors. Directions for empirical testing of these propositions are also discussed, along with implications for supportive communication research and the study of online communities.