Online and Offline Adaptation among Transnational Newcomers: Technology-mediated Social Exchange and Trust Development

Abstract

Transnational newcomers, i.e., foreign-born populations who move to a new country, rely on social media technologies to support their adaptation, but little research has investigated technology designs’ influences on their networking and resource- seeking. My dissertation aimed to explore this research space and contribute insights to address transnational newcomers’ needs in their social media technology uses. I started my research by adapting Social Exchange Theory (SET) to explore transnational newcomers’ social media technology use for networking and resource-seeking in my first and second studies. I explored a wider range of social media technologies and investigated one-on-one interactions between transnational newcomers and local individuals through people-nearby applications (PNAs) such as Tinder and Bumble. These two studies’ results suggest that trust is a critical theme in transnational newcomers’ social media technology use, and their perceived shared identity and social support are two predictors of trust in local communities. I also found that transnational newcomers often participated in local consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce to fulfill resource needs and network with local communities.

In my third and fourth studies, I extended the prior two studies by investigating how this population participated in local C2C e-commerce and community commerce, a special type of local C2C e-commerce that emphasizes the sense of community. Based on the social commerce affordance framework, I examined a community commerce platform’s technical features’ effects on transnational newcomers’ trust in local communities. The results suggest that the social-connecting and metavoicing affordances were most likely to affect transnational newcomers’ trust in local communities.

Building on the prior four studies, I conducted an online survey to model transnational newcomers’ trust development in local-community-based Facebook groups in my fifth study. I employed path analysis to test a model consisting of hypotheses among social-connecting affordance, metavoicing affordance, shared identity, social support, and trust in local communities. The results suggest that the social- connecting affordance has a strong direct effect on transnational newcomers’ trust in local communities. Transnational newcomers’ perceived shared identity and social support are also significant mediators between social-connecting affordance and trust. The results reveal opportunities to foster transnational newcomers’ trust in local communities by improving ways members connect in local-community-based Facebook groups.

My dissertation surfaces four key themes of transnational newcomers’ social media technology use for adaptation: (1) indirect exchanges as a comfortable way of interacting, (2) informational and instrumental resources as key social supports, (3) social support and shared ethnicity as keys to trust and engagement, and (4) challenges on platforms: Lurker and free-rider perceptions. I closed my dissertation with takeaways and reflections on methodologies, theoretical frameworks, community collaborations, and future research. My dissertation makes practical contributions by recommending design implications to enhance social media technology’s support in transnational newcomers’ adaptation, and theoretical contributions to move research domains such as human-computer interaction, immigration studies, and social exchange forward.