Celebrating your choice: Online social sup- port for individuals facing traditional abortion stigmas
Date:
This study seeks to understand the role of communication in an online support group celebrating individual freedom to receive an abortion. The research draws on contemporary social support literature to examine the manifestation of previously researched communicative support behaviors, along with the emergence of new behaviors. The results indicate the emergence of two support strategies unique to this context: attacks/criticisms and storytelling. These forms of support allowed members to symbolically justify their controversial beliefs, as well as narratively make sense of their personal and social relationships before, during, or after the decision to undergo an abortion. The findings demonstrate the dark side of social support as it relates to stigmatized beliefs by showing how the open source nature of the support group perpetuates the prevalence of potentially chastising, yet meaningful, communicative behaviors.