Page 144 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

derive support from their shared network. Thus, for sojourners in LDRR, SNS- based relationship support might suffice. In terms of perceived social support, this kind of support was not specific to relationship maintenance needs, but pertained to one’s overall or general need. As explained by Li et al. (2015), in the general population, SNS interaction was not sufficient for one to feel generally supported. In the context of sojourn, SNS interaction had a detrimental effect on perceived social support in the long-term. It could be that over time, the more sojourners use SNS to interact with the host-country network, the more that they recognized that support was not available, or perhaps not conducive, via SNS. Indeed, it was regular face-to-face interaction that sustained sojourners’ perceived social support. This dissertation contributes to theorizing by illustrating how the level of specificity of support (relationship-specific vs. overall personal need), the context of support (SNS-based vs general perceived social support), and the source of support (specific others such as a couples’ shared network or more general significant others in the host-country network) may have conflicting associations with SNS use among sojourners. These findings point to the importance of mapping out when SNS use and with what type of support, in which context, and from whom, could be most beneficial for sojourners’ adjustment.
The Other Way Around: Can Adjustment Predict SNS Interactions via Subjective Outcomes?
Perceived social support and psychological adjustment. This dissertation contributes to the body of knowledge by disentangling the direction of associations between social interactions and subjective outcomes, as well as subjective outcomes and adjustment. One of the most prominent theoretical assumptions in this dissertation is that media effects are transactional (Slater, 2015; Valkenburg et al., 2016). With this presupposition, it was necessary to design a study that accounts for the possible reciprocal effects between media use and its outcome(s). The directionality of effects is a critical gap in SNS communication literature (Meng et al., 2017; Trepte & Scharkow, 2016).
The findings of this dissertation showed that better psychological adjustment in the host country heightened perceived social support, which, in turn, increased SNS interactions with the host-country network. This is in line with the social enhancement hypothesis – the better adjusted sojourners, who perceive greater support, are more likely to use SNS to interact and build their social networks in the host country (Lee, 2009; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007b).
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