Page 43 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

For psychological adjustment, we focused on depressive symptoms, consistent with conceptualizations in previous studies (Ward et al., 2001; Zhang & Goodson, 2011). Depressive symptoms were one of the major complaints of international students who went for counseling (Smith & Khawaja, 2011). Thus, it is important to examine how communication and social support may alleviate or exacerbate depressive symptoms.
A concurrent communication model
Most studies on international sojourners’ adjustment have investigated the relevance of the host- and the home-country networks, and the roles of various communication channels in facilitating access to social support separately (Berry, 2006; Cemalcilar, 2008; Lee et al., 2011; Rui & Wang, 2015; Ward et al., 2001). However, these networks and communication channels may have complementary influences on international students’ access to social support (Rui & Wang, 2015). Current scholarship provides evidence that SNS interaction reinforces FtF interaction (Dienlin, Masur, & Trepte, 2017). It has been shown that those people who communicated actively via SNSs also communicated actively FtF. This article is premised on this finding, and presupposes that international students use these communication channels concomitantly. Previous studies have established that offline (FtF) and online (SNS) communication contexts both offer opportunities to access different types of support (Trepte et al., 2015; Wright et al., 2013). When it comes to online communication, the use of multiple online communication modes (such as the Internet, computer, and cellphone) positively influences perceived social support from friends and family (Sarriera, Abs, Casas, & Bedin, 2012). In this study, we aimed to extend existing theories by proposing a concurrent communication model in investigating sojourners’ adjustment. Using this model, we investigated the relative importance of three types of interactions (i.e., FtF interaction with the host-country network, Facebook interaction with the host-country network, and Facebook interaction with the home-country network) in perceived social support. Crucially, we also examined the impact of perceived social support on psychological adjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms) of international students. Figure 1 provides a summary of the model we aimed to investigate.
SNS, Support, and Depression 41