International students interaction behavior with social media

It is a research to analyse the feature of international student communication through social media, which will relate to what kinds of social media they prefer to use in the host country and what kinds of behaviour would international student behave when they use social media.

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Generally, according to Grace Saw, Wendy Abbot and Jessie Donaghey research about ‘Social media for international students’, it shows that mainly, Facebook was the most popular for both domestic and international students. Almost respondents replay that they had a Facebook account. And the second most popular media is YouTube which half of respondents indicated they have used it. After that is Twitter.

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More detailed analysis was carried out on the usage of the top three sites, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

As the respond from survey, most respondents have had a Facebook account, while they do not have a Twitter account. And the number of users with YouTube is similar to the Facebook’s. In addition, most respondents keep their Facebook account for more than 2 years, which is same as the usage of YouTube’s. And those respondents who have Twitter accounts are more likely to have used it within the last 2 years.

More detailly, by focusing on data from top five majority countries’ respondents, more than half of respondents from China indicated they have had their Facebook accounts less than 2 years. A small percentage of students from Canada and USA do not have Facebook accounts, or have an account but do not use it.

The pattern of length of usage is significantly different for Twitter. In comparison to Facebook, a much greater percentage of all respondents from these countries do not have an account or no longer use it, and a greater percentage from all countries have had their Twitter accounts a shorter time.

The length of usage patterns for YouTube are different again for respondents from these countries, with a quarter of respondents from China having had their account less than one year, but only one fifth of them do not have an account, while less than half of those from Canada do not have an account.

From another research which is related to how social networks of international students improve communication in Australia done by Dr Shanton’ team, they found that for students from China, they are more likely to report that they have a social network dominated by Chinese international students. For Students from Brazil, USA and Japan, they are more likely to have social networks with both Australian and international students from a variety of countries. Finally, students from Southeast Asia prefer social networks with international students from a variety of countries.

Combining result from those two research, it clearly shows that international students from different region have significantly different preference with social media. Finding the rules behind these behaviors could be benefit for attracting more potential users from a variety of countries.

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Taking close look for reasons why respondents select these sites as their favourites, these are analysed and categorised as social, useful and ease of use. The majority were social reasons in some way, such as:

• All my friends are using these sites
• To keep in touch with friends overseas
• Get information on my friends
• There are so many people in these networks
• They bring two people closer and in an effective way
• Everyone has an account
• Most people around me use it, so I can get in touch with more people

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Moreover, it also analyses how can social media benefit for educational purpose. According to the result of survey, Facebook is used to some extent for all the listed educational purposes, but YouTube was only of use for most students for finding information for their studies.

The list of activities that respondents’ educational usage with social media:

• Sharing my work
• Sharing my ideas about topics I am studying
• Creating informal study group
• Arranging study groups or other class related activities
• Discussing topics from class
• Sharing study information with other students
• Asking for help with my students
• Finding information for my studies