International Students' Media Usage And Social Integration In The U.S.

Today,United States still has the largest number of international students in the whole world.With stranger in a strange land alone the misery,the strong feeling of homesickness,international students may suffer from depression,anxiety and other mental issues.Does traditional media and social media will help them integrated into the society or hinder them? Does the media content and types will affect differently? To answer these questions,this study focused on media usage and social integration.Guided by Communication's media cultivation theory and Sociology's social integration theory,this empirical study adopted quantitative survey method to examine the relationship between home conventional media,host conventional media,home social media,host social media usage and social integration with three dimensions rolebased integration,participation integration,perceived integration.After controlling for demographics,the result showed that the media usage of international students in the U.S.and their social integration has some extent relationship.Amongst dependent variables,host social media usage was most significant.Students who used more host social media,were more socially integrated.In terms of conventional media,watching host television also positively related with social integration.However,watching home television had negative relationship with social integration,even greater than the positive affect of watching American TV on social integration.Watching both home and host movie were not associated with social integration.In some extend,it reflected that movie had different effect on social integration,comparing with other media forms.Based on the research analysis,the message content on social media is mainly about what is really happening around international students' life,and social media's interaction function can connect individuals with society so that international students are able to walk through social platform to engage into the society,to understand and feel the world,which may cause its cultivation effect stronger than conventional media.In comparison with TV,movie is more artistic,and TV is closer to real life,which may be the reason that TV's cultivation effect is stronger than movie.In the last,the results have implications for students and universities to improve international students' social integration.Limitations of this study and suggestions for future study have been presented as well.