“Hello! I know you help people here, right?”: A qualitative study of young people's acted motivations in text-based counseling

Mediated counseling services are becoming more and more common, thanks to the advance and availability of ICTs. The research on motivations for choosing such a service over a face-to-face one is a relatively new field of research and previous studies identified the most common motivations as narrated by clients in ex-post interviews. The present study aims to contribute to this field of research by identifying and describing how these motivations are directly enacted within the conversations between the counseling professional and the client. Twentyone WhatsApp conversations were analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis. Results show that motivations expressed ex-post by young people found in previous research (e.g. privacy and autonomy, control over the counseling process, anonymity, accessibility of text counseling) are present in the conversations, but are more complex and nuanced in natural discursive productions. The article also presents the pragmatic implications of these occurrences in the practice of mediated counseling.