The nuanced ways that people use humor across cultures poses communication and psychological challenges for individuals transitioning to new cultural environments. This investigation explores the relationship between international students' interpersonal and mediated communication activities and their humor understanding/appreciation in Singapore. Participants (N = 223) described their friendship networks, viewed and assessed short video clips of Singaporean stand-up comedians, and completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Consistent with previous comprehensive friendship network research, international students tended to have a higher ratio of and form stronger bonds with co-national friends. However, the correlation coefficient and regression analysis indicated a significant relationship between host national friendship and Singaporean humor understanding/appreciation. Additionally, results suggest positive relationships between affiliative, self-enhancing, and self-defeating humor styles and Singaporean humor understanding/appreciation. These findings not only have implications for humor styles in an intercultural context but also demonstrate the potential impact that host social communication activities have on humor understanding/appreciation in a new culture.

This investigation identifies contextual characteristics associated with meaningful intercultural interactions between domestic students enrolled in a 13-week intercultural communication course and international students. After participating in an international student welcome and games event and three cultural encounters, domestic students completed post-activity reflection surveys that included a quality intercultural interaction scale and open-ended contextual questions. This mixed-method, convergent design approach employed factor analysis to assess the quantitative scale and utilized process and magnitude coding procedures for the qualitative data. Results suggest that meaningful intercultural interactions tend to occur when students have the opportunity to discover commonalities and experience cultural exchanges during unforced, natural, and enjoyable initial encounters. Additionally, self-disclosure, cultural learning, and personal growth characterize meaningful intercultural encounters with longer duration. These findings provide several recommendations for universities, administrators, and educators seeking to facilitate meaningful initial interactions and prolonged encounters between domestic and international students. This study also offers theoretical implications regarding intercultural relationship development and the role that domestic students play in creating a receptive host environment. Finally, this research introduces a newly developed quality intercultural interaction instrument that international educators can use to evaluate, compare, and enhance intercultural learning interventions.

Individuals use their smartphones for an assortment of communication and functional activities and in a variety of contexts. Researchers analyzing smartphone use during interpersonal interactions have posed hypotheses and developed theories regarding the positive and negative influences that smartphones have on individuals and relationships. However, there is little research that examines the role smartphone use plays in a public speaking context. The current study uses a video vignette methodology to explore audience perceptions of a speaker who uses a smartphone as a presentation aid at a small university in Singapore. Overall, results suggest that the speaker’s smartphone use did not have a negative impact on perceptions of credibility (likeability/trustworthiness, competence, speaker ability), speaker immediacy, or persuasion. However, there was a small interaction effect when accounting for participants’ degree of smartphone acceptance. University students who reported lower smartphone acceptance perceived the speaker who used a smartphone as less credible (likable/trustworthy) than a speaker who delivered a speech from memory. Additionally, despite reporting significantly less smartphone use than students, staff and instructors did not perceive a speaker who uses a smartphone compared to a memorized presentation differently. This exploratory study carries implications for better understanding normative and appropriate smartphone use in public speaking contexts and provides recommendations for public speaking educators.

Numerous students participate in and reap the documented benefits of the Erasmus+ European exchange programme. However, one of the main issues regarding the mobility is the incoming Erasmus students’ lack of social integration with host university students. This research explores the reasons behind Erasmus students’ low social integration at two small-sized universities of applied sciences in Croatia. Twenty-five Erasmus students described their relationship development with domestic Croatian students, online communication patterns, and experience with two pre-defined integration strategies. Semi-structured interview findings and thematic analysis suggest that most incoming Erasmus students were highly satisfied with their Erasmus mobility experience; however, the majority demonstrated low social integration with Croatian students. Further, the strong and vastly spread Erasmus student community shapes student expectations regarding their social life prior to mobility. Through the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) students form online connections and quickly develop relationships with other international students, an activity that potentially hinders social integration with Croatian students. This study incorporates Kim’s (2001) cross-cultural adaptation theory and extends her host social communication concept by discussing the integral role that pre-departure online communication plays in the social integration process.

Finding ways to integrate international students into new cultural environments and foster meaningful local relationships is of interest to both international education practitioners and scholars seeking to explain intercultural communication processes. Kim’s (2001) integrative cross-cultural adaptation theory provides a framework for understanding the role that interpersonal relationships play for those studying abroad with both long-term and short-term trajectories. The current multi-method investigation focuses on the latter, examining the impact of housing, classroom makeup, extra-curricular activities, and tutor program participation on the friendship network development of 105 students from twenty different countries during one semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Findings from prospective panel data combined with in-depth interviews confirm that students had significantly more co-national and multi-national friends than host national friends upon arrival; however, participation in extra-curricular activities and satisfaction with tutor programs influenced increases in host national friendship over the course of the semester. Furthermore, the potential role that intercultural connectors play in host national friendship formation offers practical implications for tutor program development and new theoretical insight.

The current study uses a longitudinal, mixed-method approach to investigate the role that new media, such as social networking sites and video chat, play in cross-cultural adaptation and international student friendship network development. Results indicate that international students significantly increase and adapt their new media use while abroad to communicate globally with their friends and family, and locally with their newly formed relationships. Furthermore, social networking site host national friends do not necessarily lead to the development of face-to-face host national friends; however, interaction with established face-to-face host national friends and friend groups via new media platforms leads to an increased understanding of host communication patterns. Finally, this study proposes that researchers who apply Kim's [1] cross-cultural adaptation theory consider incorporating Host New Media Communication as a principal concept.

A robust pattern identified in the cross-cultural adaptation and international education literature shows that upon arrival in a new cultural environment international students tend to form new friendships with individuals from their own countries while failing to develop relationships with those from the host country. This is problematic considering that communication with host nationals lies at the heart of the cross-cultural adaptation process and host national friendship is associated with a diverse set of positive outcomes. A historical debate among university administrators, international educators, and scholars as to the most effective way to arrange study abroad initiatives pivots around the amount of interaction that students have with the local culture. In order to examine the impact that study abroad program models have on friendship networks this study employs a mixed-method, longitudinal strategy to compare the friendship networks of 105 international students enrolled in 10 different study abroad programs and universities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Results show that students studying directly at Argentine Public and Private Universities have significantly more Argentine and other international student friends while students in US-based Island programs have significantly more friends form their own country. These findings reveal the central role that study abroad administration plays in the interpersonal interaction that international students have with individuals from the host country, provide several explanations for the current trends, and give implications for study abroad administration.

Using attribution theory, this study examined the effects of apology timing, apology sincerity, and feeling understood on communication satisfaction and changes in negative emotions (e.g., anger and sadness) during conflict discussions. Sixty romantic couples engaged in conversations about recurring disagreements in their relationships. One partner from each couple apologized either earlier or later during the discussions. The findings showed that different variability existed between the timing of the apology and reports of communication satisfaction. Later apologies, rather than earlier apologies, given during conflict discussions that were completed in less than 10 minutes were associated with more communication satisfaction. Earlier apologies, rather than later apologies, given during conflict discussions that could have continued past 10 minutes were associated with more communication satisfaction. Additionally, reports of feeling understood and apology sincerity predicted communication satisfaction and apologies seen as more sincere were related to reports of less hard negative emotions such as anger, but were not related to reports of soft negative emotions, such as sadness. These findings have implications for the process of forgiveness and the mediation of disputes.

The current study investigates engagement activities in an online resource exchange community exploring elements such as sense of belonging, connectedness, and trust. CouchSurfing.com is an online cultural exchange community in which members from around the globe coordinate travel accommodations and organize gatherings with fellow members via a social media platform. Findings confirmed that members who have not met face-to-face with other members have a lower sense of belonging to the community than those who have. Increased attendance to gatherings was positively related to sense of belonging to the community, and hosting had a positive relationship with trust in the community. Additionally, CouchSurfers reported that they preferred to be contacted through personal e-mails rather then group e-mails, while those who reported an increased participation in gatherings found group e-mails to be useful.

International students continue to grow in number worldwide, prompting researchers to look for ways to make the study abroad experience more fruitful. One avenue of research has focused on friendship formation, the significant role it plays in the study abroad experience, and the unique friendship combinations made possible by the study abroad experience. International students form friendships with individuals from their own country, from other countries, and from the host country. Research has found that international students often have more friends from their home country; however, research has also demonstrated a relationship between having more host country friends and satisfaction, contentment, decreased homesickness, and social connectedness. The current study looks to further explore these relationships through a social network lens by examining friendship network ratios, strength, and variability of the three friendship groups. A friendship network grid was developed to assess where international students’ friends are from and how strong those friendships are. Eighty four international students completed a survey examining the relationship between friendship networks, social connectedness, homesickness, contentment, and satisfaction. Contrary to prior research, international students did not report having a higher ratio of individuals from their home country in their friendship networks. However, international students with a higher ratio of individuals from the host country in their network claimed to be more satisfied, content, and less homesick. Furthermore, participants who reported more friendship variability with host country individuals described themselves as more satisfied, content, and more socially connected. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

A robust finding in compliance-seeking message effects research is that providing an unsolicited favor to a target before making a direct request for compliance is more effective than a direct request alone. Explaining this effect, however, has proven a more elusive goal. Most existing studies either do not examine potential mediators of the favor-compliance relationship or restrict their focus to one or two potential mediators. In this study, the authors extend compliance research by testing five potential explanations for the favor-compliance relationship and examine the relationship in an untested context, a cross-sex date request. We also examine the impact of another important predictor of compliance, socioeconomic status (SES). Findings suggest that favor and SES interact to affect compliance with a date request and that the positive affective mechanisms of gratitude, liking, and physical attraction best explain these effects. Implications for understanding human reciprocal behavior and its explanatory mechanisms are discussed.