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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1. Introduction
1.1 Research background
1.1.1. Sojourning in Taiwan
Every year, the networking website for expatriate InterNations collects the answers of more than 20,000 sojourners and ranks 64 countries around the world regarding the respondents' living conditions abroad on such criteria as the quality of life, the job satisfaction, the cost of living, the health care system, financial situation, and ease of settling in (Forbes.com, InterNations.com). Taiwan, which is consistently at the top of the list, was ranked second in 2018, fourth in 2017, and first in 2016. Last year, Taiwan was once again voted the best country in the world for expatriates to live in. The results the 2019 survey showed an impressive overall satisfaction rate of 86 percent from sojourners living in Taiwan for an average of only 75 percent from sojourners living in the rest of the surveyed countries. In effect, most foreigners living in Taiwan are satisfied with the quality (92%) and affordability (89%) of the healthcare system, the level of personal safety (96%), and their financial situation (85%). Moreover, they concur that Taiwanese people are very friendly and find it easy to interact with them, despite the difficulty of learning Mandarin. The cultural richness, as well as the beauty and diversity of the nature offered by the island, are also an important upside for sojourners and it is not uncommon to find accounts of people who came to Taiwan for a short trip and ended up extending their stay after falling in love with the country's hospitality.
As the number of sojourners moving to Taiwan is consistently growing, the need to understand their adjustment to this country becomes more important. Moreover, the criteria examined by Internations’ Expat Insider survey focus on the sociocultural aspects of adjustment and it would be insightful to complement them with emotional components.
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The improvements in transportation and communication technologies as well as the increasing economic and political ties across our globalized world have participated in the acceleration of international mobility in recent years. The internationalization of professional opportunities encourages people to widen their job search beyond the borders of their home country, and companies are increasingly assigning some of their employees to work and live abroad.
Individuals working in a foreign country are often referred to as expatriates, whom Von Koppenfels (2014) define as ''those who are either on short-term intra-company transfers or working for international companies for the longer term''.
Moreover, the increase of international mobility also brought new demands in terms of qualifications and so-called global skills, such as mastering foreign languages or holding a diversified cultural knowledge, are now key resume features that stimulate employability.
Studying abroad is therefore encouraged and more sought by students. Thus, in order to stay competitive, many universities are proposing exchange and double-degree programs abroad.
This is particularly true for Taiwan, which saw a spectacular increase of international students in the past few years. According to the Ministry of Education, between 2013 and 2018, the number of non-citizens students in Taiwan has increased by 59,3%.
Recent years have also seen the emergence of new professions that entirely depend on the Internet such as bloggers, vloggers, and social media influencers. It also contributed to the development of online outsourcing with more companies hiring remote freelancers who can do their job from anywhere in the world as long as they have access to a steady Internet connection.
Individuals working under such conditions are commonly called digital nomads, which is the appellation for any individual who has the ability “to work remotely from their laptop and use their freedom from an office to travel the world” (Thompson, 2018).
Expatriates, international students and digital nomads: three categories that have in common the fact that they are settling abroad for other purposes than tourism and are doing so for a relatively long period of time that could be from five months to five years with the mindset that their stay is temporary, whether they know the date of departure or not. Therefore, they can be considered as being part of the larger group of sojourners, which is the word that will be used throughout this study.
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Contrary to permanent migrants, sojourners are characterized by the transience of their stay abroad and are subjected to less administrative constraints, thus allowing them to bypass the rigorous restrictions on entry for long-term settlement (Cohen, 2008). It also grants them more mobility freedom and the chance to travel around the world while pursuing their studies or earning a living. However, whether it is for studying or working purposes, they all have responsibilities and a real-life routine, which differentiate them from tourists. These obligations translate into a certain commitment to the host country that obliges sojourners to adjust to the new environment. According to Askoy (2017), sojourners represent a multicultural community in which they face similar challenges of settling in, adjusting, and joining in social life in a new culture. This adjustment is often accompanied by feelings of psychological distress such as homesickness, acculturative stress, and loneliness. In the host country, sojourners depend on social support to alleviate acculturative stress and thus maintain their psychological well-being.
1.1.3. Social media and social support
The challenges induced by the uncertainty and the unfamiliarity of living in a foreign environment make sojourning a particularly meaningful context to study the social support attributes of social media platforms. Indeed, social support has been found to be an essential predictor of successful adjustment and social media platforms are ideal providers of social support. In effect, by breaking the limits of time and space, the Internet allow sojourners to interact with their existing social networks and to connect with new individuals, notably using social media sites. On these platforms, sojourners can maintain communications with kins and friends in their home country while finding the information necessary to navigate their host country, both of which have been proven to be essential constituents of adjustment (Bierwiaczonek & Waldzus, 2016; Smith & Khawaja, 2011). The use of social media has been found to positively influence the adjustment of expatriates, who are using such platforms to develop friendships, to gather survival information about the host country (Aksoy, 2016), and to preserve their connection with their home country (Zaw, 2018).
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1.2. Research aim
Most of the research investigating the use of SNS within the context of the cross-cultural adjustment regards social media in its ensemble without separating the findings per platform.
Yet, previous studies suggest that, as some social processes differ from a platform to another (Pittman & Reich, 2016), extrapolating the effects of one platform to all SNS can be ill-suited (Wilson, Gosling & Graham, 2012). Hence, the study of social media deserves to be differentiated by platforms.
As Facebook and Instagram are the two main platforms used by sojourners in Taiwan, the present study will examine how the five dimensions of social support are perceived and allocated on these two social media platforms. A substantial amount of research suggests that Facebook can provide all five dimensions of social support. Furthermore, the positive correlation between Facebook Use and the cross-cultural adjustment of sojourners have been found in multiple studies. However, the type of social support gained using Instagram and its impact on adjustment are yet to be investigated. Hence, the present study aims to fill this gap.
Moreover, it would be meaningful to gain more insight into the type of social support that sojourners are seeking on social media and if they are varying on different platforms. Some scholars have argued that social support should not be studied as a unidimensional construct and have prompted researchers to examine how different social media platforms facilitate different forms on social support (Kramer et al., 2014). Previous research has found that social media can facilitate different dimensions of social support and that some platforms “may be better-suited than others for provision and accessing of specific types of support” (Hayes et al., 2016).
Therefore, the aim of this study is twofold. The first is to examine the effect of Facebook and Instagram on psychological adjustment. The second is to test whether the five social support dimensions mediate those relationships. And as it has not been the effect of the different social support dimensions have not been differentiated in the present literature that relates Facebook and Instagram use to cross-cultural adjustment, this research intends to fill this gap.
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國立 政 治 大 學