I’m interested in supportive communication (SC) because I’ve been a traveler in many senses, and in my journey, I realized SC is the ambience or our lives. I’m a georgraphic traveler. I lived in Liuzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Michigan - five places spanning a half sphere, speaking different languages that utter very different cultures. I’m also a class traveler. I was born a working-class child, but ended up going to a great university with less than 0.6% admission rate, Nanjing University and now a PhD candidate, and along the way I met friends coming from more affluent families.
These experiences made me realize we could all feel different than others at some point, in some context. Where there are differences, there can be threat to one’s identity and one may feel a need for either integration or differentiation. In search of a solution amid fear of being alienated, people make different attempts. Some make friends and seek out supporrt from them (social support); some wonder into the wild to find someone they may love (online dating); and some build their connections with or through non-humans (AI chatbots, dating algo). Without effective SC strategies, people will likely struggle to be socially included, which can lead to segregation, resentment, and hatre.
Eventually, SC glues people and society together. Such crucial SC skills can be trained, but the potential of SC in our time is yet to be fully understood by us. We live in an age when new social ideas, forms, and technologies emerge every day. Research is needed to understand how SC theories may adapt to the characteristics and needs of our time. That is how I got hooked on this research topic. If you are interested, I invite you to read my work and share your thoughts with me.