Foreign students' use of home country online resources : a uses and gratifications perspective

Abstract

<p>Second the correlations and the differences between each gratification sought (GS) and its corresponding gratification obtained (GO) item support the concept that the audience members are selective but not always obtain whatever they want. Finally, GO items instead of GS items (as indicated in previous study) were found stronger predictors on foreign students' exposure to their favorite home country online resources. This study also found that home country online resources serve as the best alternative for foreign students to access to home country mass media. However, even with an average weekly exposure of 6.22 hours to home country online resources, many foreign students still indicated a preference to traditional home country mass media if they were not in the United States.This study employs the uses and gratifications perspective on new mass media to examine foreign students' use of the mass media to obtain news and information from their home countries. Previous research on foreign students focused primarily on foreign students' adjustment and acculturation to the host country. Among those studies, media exposure and consumption have always been the important issues whenever foreign students' needs are concerned. The fast developing Internet may in some way change the situation and thus deserves an investigation. With the combination of previous literature on foreign students' exposure of mass media and recent research on the Internet, this study examined foreign students' gratifications sought and obtained from home country online resources from a uses and gratifications perspective. The results of this study conform in many ways to previous findings on the uses and gratifications theory on different media. First, gratifications dimensions found in this study, including "Escape," "Social Interactions," "Personal Utility," and "Information Seeking," are similar to gratifications themes found in previous literature on mass media.</p>