Connect, Disconnect, and Reconnect: How Chinese Students Adapt to a New Culture via the Net

The rapid growth of the Internet has drastically altered the scene of human communication and presented new challenges to traditional cross-cultural adaptation (CCA) research. This book is intended to bridge CCA and Internet research by examining the role of the Internet in the cross-cultural adaptation process. The researcher explored how different Internet use patterns, in terms of amount and type (host Internet use and ethnic Internet use), affect Chinese students? sociocultural and psychological adaptation to the American culture. A model of Internet use in CCA was proposed and tested. The results showed that individual differences, Internet use motives and host Internet use are significant predictors for psychological adaptations. It is hoped that the study will not only draw more attention from intercultural communication scholars in studying CCA in the new media environment, but also will shed some light on the social and cultural consequences of Internet use in a unique context.