International students' use of facebook vs. a home country site

Previous work on social network sites (SNSs) tends to examine use of a single site, such as Facebook. In this survey study, we examined international students' motivations for participation in Facebook versus a site (Renren or Cyworld) from their own country. We anticipated that use of Facebook would be driven by desires to expand bridging social capital, whereas use of the home country site would be driven primarily by the desire to maintain existing bonds. A survey of 335 Chinese and Korean students in the U.S. showed that contrary to our expectations, desires to develop both bridging and bonding social ties were associated with greater intensity of activity on Facebook and the home country site. Greater intentions to interact with people from their own home country were associated with greater interaction on the home country site. Both intensity of site use and number of friends were higher for Korean than Chinese respondents. We conclude with some thoughts as to how our findings might be used to help people manage social relationships across two different sites in different countries.