Page 44 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment

Figure 1. The proposed model for three types of interaction (FtF interaction with the host-country network, Facebook interaction with the host-country network, and Facebook interaction with the home-country network), perceived social support, and psychological adjustment (depressive symptoms).
FtF interaction with the host-country network. Consistent with the previous theories and research, we hypothesized that FtF interaction with the host-country network would predict perceived social support (Adelman, 1988; Berry, 2006; Ward et al., 2001). We limited host-country network to international students’ significant others, such as family and friends. We present our first hypothesis:
H1: Greater FtF interaction with the host-country network predicts higher perceived social support.
Facebook interaction with the host- and the home-country networks.
Previous studies on SNS use and perceived social support yielded inconsistent results (Li et al., 2015; Meng et al., 2017). Several studies show that SNS use is positively associated with perceived social support (Burke & Kraut, 2016; Meng et al., 2017). Other studies point to the lack of association between SNS use and perceived social support (Li et al., 2015; Seo, Harn, Ebrahim, & Aldana, 2016). These inconsistencies in results were attributed to the diverse ways SNS use was measured (Seo et al., 2016). We defined SNS use as active Facebook interaction with significant others (such as family and friends). Thus, in this study, Facebook interaction with the home- and the host-country network means engaging in social interactions with family and friends on Facebook (Gerson, Plagnol, & Corr, 2017).
Transactional feature of media effects. Transactional models of media effects assume reciprocal causal relationships between media use and outcomes of media use (Slater, 2015; Valkenburg, Peter, & Walther, 2016). These reciprocal paths have been depicted as dynamic and imply that one process (e.g., media use)
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