This Social Support Theory is concerned with the interaction between health outcomes, the receipt of aid or comfort, and actions or information that leads individuals to feel supported. It argues that subjects like enacted and perceived support contribute significantly to the state of health and well-being of a person. Daena Goldsmith and Terrance Albrecht created the theory to explain the idea that what we say, how we say it, and when we say it, all affect the advice’s ability to be perceived as criticism versus support. The part of the communication model that this theory most relates to would be the aspect of noise as it can frame how certain information is viewed and then interpreted en route to the communicator.
The Social Support Theory is considered an umbrella term for additional theories and concepts concerning social networks and supportive communication as a whole. The two accepted theoretical explanations for why social support is so closely related to both health and well-being would be the direct effect and the buffering effect. The direct effect is what stimulates positive constructions of health and generates chemical changes released in the brain. It implies that the more connected a social network you have, the more access you have to a variety of helpful resources. While the buffering effect is when supportive communication acts as a buffer for physiological responses to stress that affect health. This effect helps by that positive communication having a strong correlation to feeling better and lessening stressors. According to Goldsmith and Albrecht, there are four explanations for why these effects occur in the theory. The first explanation is that social support provides feedback and encourages the exercising of social control, with the caveat that negative actions may prevail if there are negative norms in the social network. The second explanation is that social support provides information regarding health care as well as where to look, help managing the uncertain aspects of health conditions, and suggestions as to where to receive necessary services. The third explanation is that social support provides physical support, such as financial, to address these health issues. The fourth and final explanation is that social support helps to communicate assistance with coping in the face of adversity and negative events.
The Social Support Theory can be used to explain the phenomenon of how fandom communities within the music industry can affect a person and why they may do so. For many people on the internet, fandoms are where they go to purposefully find support they may be lacking in other parts of their lives. This can be either positive or negative depending on the situation. According to the authors Gray et. all (2017) of Fandom, Second Edition: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, “the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions appear to be complementary, intrinsically connected parts of the same ecosystem of analysis” (pp.9-10). These dimensions are referring to the intrapersonal as the relationship between the fan and fan object and the interpersonal as the collective or fan community. The knowledge that these concepts influence each other so deeply is important in better understanding the topic of fandom communities. Also learned from this text, is that these fandom communities reflect the existing societal and cultural communities even so far as to enforce their same negative norms (p.5). So, when applying this theory to the concept of fandom communities what we come away with is that these effects that occur within society according to the theory happen in these communities on a smaller, but no different scale. Fandom communities easily make use of both the direct and buffering effects, but most commonly demonstrate their usage through the first and third explanations as stated above. The first explanation is being most directly portrayed by the idea that the fandom communities are perpetuating those same negative norms on a smaller scale. While the third explanation is portrayed through the existence of, “a sense of transcultural fan community belonging among globally dispersed individual fans,” that is encouraged by the perpetuation of the fandom (p.179). As this demonstrates that tangible support discussed in the theory.
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