作为复媒体环境的社交媒体:中国留学生群体的平台分配与文化适应

Social Media as Polymedia Environment:Platform Allocation and Acculturation of Chinese Overseas Students

社交媒体为留学生群体提供了处理多元社交关系的传播平台。既有研究大多聚焦于某一社交媒体平台的使用如何影响留学生的身份建构。本研究在此基础之上进行了两项思路转换:其一,从考察单一社交媒体的使用,扩充为考察不同社交媒体的"分配性"使用;其二,通过引入"生活变迁"这一概念,反向考察自我身份如何影响其社交媒体使用。基于对20位中国留学生的访谈,本研究首先提炼出工具型、融入型、体验型三类留学生,并比较了三者之间对社交媒体平台的分配差异,进而将这种差异放置在生活变迁的语境中进行分析。这也在理论层面上回应并提倡了一种"去媒体中心的媒体研究"。

Social media served as communication tools for international students to deal with multiple social relationships. Compared with most of existing studies exploring how the media practices of international students on a single platform affect their identity construction, this paper pushes this research field ahead in two fronts: firstly, instead of focusing only on one platform, this study investigates how those students distribute different social media;Secondly, by introducing the concept of "life transition", it examines how the perception of self-identity affects students’ use of social media. This study, with interviews with 20 Chinese overseas students, tries to summarize the distribution differences of social media platforms of three types of students, namely, students who regard overseas-study experience as an instrument for their future gaining, students with good integration in local cultures, and students only focusing on enriching their personal experiences. Then, it further analyzes such differences in the context of life transitions. Theoretically, this study also responds to and advocates the view of "non-media centric media studies".