Using Group Messaging to Facilitate Peer Support Among Early Doctoral Students: A Thematic Analysis of One Cohort’s Text Messages

Students face multiple stressors while earning their doctorates. Since peer support is a common recommendation for easing this stress, we realized graduate students, faculty, and academic program administrators might have interest in how our cohort used group messaging to facilitate peer support early in our studies. We conducted a thematic analysis examining how group messaging helped new doctoral students in a hybrid program maintain ongoing engagement with course content and build interpersonal relationships. McClusky’s Theory of Margin provided a theoretical framework for this project. Results of thematic analysis emphasize that students utilized this communication medium to reach out to peers for support and to form interpersonal relationships with peers at a distance.