Page 22 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

manage social resources (Dekker et al., 2015; Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). Thus, SNS-based social interactions are relevant to investigate in the context of sojourners.
Currently, SNS use is one of the most popular Internet activities, and Facebook is the most popular SNS globally (Ahmad, 2019; Smith & Anderson, 2018; “Social Media Statistics”, 2018). Among migrants, Facebook is the most popular and most frequently used SNS (Cassar, Gauci, & Bacchi, 2016). It is also widely used by university students in general (Ellison et al., 2007; Sleeman et al., 2016). For these reasons, this dissertation will focus on SNS use, and more specifically the use of Facebook, by international sojourners instead of general CMC or social media use.
Home versus Host-country Networks, Face-to-Face versus SNS
With SNSs, regular and sustained social interactions during sojourn are no longer limited to geographically-close host-country networks, but also now include established, although distant, home-country networks. Alongside face-to-face interactions with the host-country network, SNSs are used to interact with both the home- and the host-country networks. Most studies so far have investigated the relevance of the host- and the home-country networks and the roles of face- to-face and CMC channels in sojourners’ adjustment separately (Berry, 2006; Cemalcilar, 2008; English et al., 2017; Hofhuis et al., 2019; Mikal & Grace, 2012; Rui & Wang, 2015; Sleeman et al., 2016; Ward et al., 2001; Ye, 2006). However, these country networks and communication channels may have complementary influences on international sojourners’ adjustment processes (Dienlin, Masur, & Trepte, 2017; English et al., 2017; Hofhuis et al., 2019; Rui & Wang, 2015). Whether CMC reinforces or displaces face-to-face interaction has been an ongoing debate in communication research (Dienlin et al., 2017). Current scholarship provides greater evidence for the reinforcement argument, which states that those people who communicate via one channel (e.g., SNS) also communicate actively via other channels (e.g., face-to-face, email) (Dienlin et al., 2017). Thus, the use of SNS does not displace face-to-face interactions. It is also possible that people communicate with the same set of people using different channels. This dissertation is premised on the reinforcement argument, and presupposes that international sojourners use various communication channels concomitantly.
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