Page 20 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

host environment” (Ward & Kennedy, 1999, p. 60). In other words, sociocultural adjustment refers to how a sojourner is able to manage and handle challenges in daily life in the host country (Berry, 2006).
The combined general assumptions of Berry’s summative framework on cross-cultural adjustment (2003), and Ward and Colleagues’ integrative framework on cross-cultural transition and adjustment (2001, 1994) will serve as the overarching theoretical framework in this dissertation (see Figure 1). This general framework provides a way of understanding the roles of social interactions in sojourner’s adjustment as a process resulting from the intervening effects of subjective outcomes.
Figure 1. A general framework for understanding the relations of social interactions, subjective outcomes, and sojourners’ adjustment
The Pivotal Role of Social Interactions
A common assumption in earlier cross-cultural transition adjustment models is the pivotal role that social interactions play in sojourners’ adjustment (e.g., Berry, 2003, 2006; Kim, 2017; Ward, 2001). Social interactions, in the form of intercultural contacts and communication, are characterized as a primary component of the transition process, and a “causal agent that places a load or demand on the individual” (Berry, 2006, p. 46). Thus, social interactions are a crucial starting point when it comes to investigating sojourners’ adjustment.
The conceptualization of social interactions in the earlier models of international sojourners’ adjustment emphasized the importance of face-to-face interactions with the host-country networks in the adjustment process (Berry, 2003, 2006; Ward et al., 2001). This was largely due to the fact that the communication of early migrants with family and friends in the home country was limited, mostly via postal mail (which could take long intervals), and costly long-distance telephone calls (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). However, with the development of the Internet
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