Online maintenance of life domains: Uses of social network sites during graduate education among the US and international students

Highlights

• Geographic origin was a significant predictor of number of friends.

• International students had significantly fewer social network site friends.

• Geographic origin was not a significant predictor of social network site use for socializing.

Abstract

Students who pursue graduate degrees often do so under the burden of great geographic displacement. This study takes a uses and gratifications approach to examining the usage of Social Networking Sites (SNS) by both American and international graduate students studying at an American university. Specifically, it examines how SNS are used in relationship maintenance with friends and family, news consumption from one’s home state or country, political expression, and social and political transition to one’s new home. Our findings suggest that geographic and physical displacements do not always influence students in maintaining relationships via social media.

Introduction

In the pre-Internet era, maintaining personal and informational ties to older life-domains could be a difficult undertaking for those who migrate a distance for their education. Now, social network sites, such as Facebook, may provide ready avenues for such diasporic usage, allowing users to develop behaviors that differ from those undertaken by physically proximate users. These sites have been turned into virtual life-domains for gathering and sharing information, ideas, and opinions to their social networks. Though the Internet and computer-mediated communication have a strong affect, people select online messages consciously. Therefore, uses and gratifications theory has been used by researchers to examine the role of the Internet. Of the studies that have looked at the uses and gratifications of the Internet, most focused on social media and social network sites. Current scholarship about the role of social media makes it obvious that social media are used for social interactions. Social media have become important platforms for interpersonal communication in the new media age, and social network sites are being valued as social media. In this fragmented and individualized era of human interactions, people find avenues to interact with each other in virtual networks like social network sites. A Pew Internet and American Life Project (2011) survey shows that 62% of Americans who are online use social network sites. Users of social network sites increasingly take part in virtual interactions. Terming social network sites “virtual communities”, Chung and Austria (2010) quote Strokes (2009) as saying they are, “a type of web site model where individual members become part of a broader virtual community” (p. 581).

Social network sites are popular because they provide opportunities and platforms for online relationships. Studies show (e.g., Aleman and Wartman, 2009, Park et al., 2009) that people take part in online networks and become members of virtual communities with the aid of social network sites. The use of social media and social network sites enables people to participate in virtual social networks and communities. Since the advent of social network sites, scholars have mainly focused on uses and gratifications identified by users. The present study addresses the uses and gratifications of these sites among US and international students pursuing graduate education.