At work and in the family, people do emotional work to meet other people's emotional needs, improve their wellbeing, and maintain social harmony. Emotional work is unique and skilled work - it involves handling emotions and social relationships and its product is the change of feeling in others. ¶ The thesis extends the work of Erickson and Wharton (1993, 1997) and England (1992, England & Farkas, 1986) by adding a psychological perspective. Emotional work is defined in terms of behaviours. Three dimensions, companionship, help and regulation, distinguish whether positive or negative emotions in other people are the target of emotional work. Companionship builds positive emotions, whereas help and regulation repairs and regulates negative emotions. ¶ Two studies, the Public Service Study (n=448) and the Health Care Study (n=261), sample different work and family role contexts (spouse, parent, kinkeeper and friendship, manager, workmate and service roles). The Integrative Emotional Work (IEW) Inventory was developed to assess emotional work in these roles. ¶ Emotional work is not just women's work. Younger people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds also do more emotional work. In contexts where it is not rewarded, emotional work is done by those with lower status. Emotional work is responsive and increases when other people are distressed. It is an aspect of the domestic division of labour, and influenced by workplace climate. Although personality is a factor, some determinants are modifiable. People do more emotional work when they have the skills, when it is saliently prescribed, and when it is rewarded and recognised. ¶ Emotional work is costly to those who do it and combines in its effects across work and family roles. When people do emotional work they 'catch' emotions from others (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Handling positive emotions in others improves wellbeing. However, handling negative emotions in others relates to a wide range of psychological health problems. These health costs are mitigated when emotional work is rewarded. Emotional work's devaluation sets in train social group differences in its performance, and confers both material (England & Folbre, 1999) and health disadvantages on those who do it.

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People are increasingly turning to online communities for entertainment, information, and social support, among other uses and gratifications. Online communities include traditional online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook but also specialized online health communities (OHCs) where people go specifically to seek social support for various health conditions. OHCs have obvious health ramifications but the use of OSNs can also influence people's mental health and health behaviors. The use of online communities has been widely studied but in the health context their exploration has been more limited. Not only are online communities being extensively used for health purposes, but there is also increasing concern that the use of online communities can itself affect health. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how such technologies influence people's health and health behaviors. The research in this dissertation centers on examining how online community use influences health and health behaviors. There are three studies in this dissertation. The first study develops a conceptual model to explain the process whereby the characteristics of a request from an OHC user for social support is answered by a wounded healer, who is a person leveraging their own experiences with health challenges to help others. The second study investigates how algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency of an OSN newsfeed algorithm influence the users' attitudes and beliefs about childhood vaccines and ultimately their vaccine hesitancy. The third study examines how OSN social overload, through OSN use, can lead to psychological distress and received social support. The research contributes theoretical and practical insights to the literature on the use of online communities in the health context. / Doctor of Philosophy / People use online communities to socialize and to seek out information and help. Online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook are large communities on which people segregate into smaller groups to discuss joint interests. Some online communities cater to specific needs, such as online health communities (OHCs), which provide platforms for people to talk about the health challenges they or their loved ones are facing. Online communities do not intentionally seek controversy, but because they welcome all perspectives, they have contributed to phenomena such as vaccine hesitancy. Moreover, social overload from the use of OSNs can have both positive and negative psychological effects on users. This dissertation examines the intersection of online communities and health. The first study explains how the interaction of the characteristics of a request for social support made by an OHC user and the characteristics of the wounded healer drive the provision of social support. The model that is developed shows the paths through which the empathy of the wounded healer and the characteristics of the request lead to motivation to provide help to those in need on an OHC. In the second study, the role of characteristics of a newsfeed algorithm, specifically fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT), in the development of childhood vaccine hesitancy is examined. The findings show that people's perceptions of the newsfeed algorithm's FAT increase their negative attitudes toward vaccination and their perceived behavioral control over vaccination. The third study examines how different uses of OSNs can influence the relationships between social overload and psychological distress and received social support. The findings show how OSN use can be tailored to decrease negative and increase positive psychological consequences without discontinuing use.