The purpose of the study was to explore the media use and relational communication practices Chinese international students use to maintain their family relationships, and the association of these practices to acculturation, stress, and family cohesion. The media use and communication practices of Chinese international students studying at a large US university were analyzed. Consistent with media niche theory, Chinese students preferred to use and did use the telephone more often than email to contact family members. In comparison to email, they used the telephone to communicate with family more often per week, covered a greater diversity of conversation topics, used a greater number of relational maintenance themes, and had a greater level of openness in their communicative exchanges. Gender, phone contacts per week and email topic diversity predicted students' acculturative stress levels, while phone topic diversity and open phone communication predicted acculturation level. Open phone and email communication predicted family cohesion. Consistencies in particular topics and relational message themes were also discovered, with similar relational message themes occurring in email as well as in the telephone context. However, that a greater variety of topics and relational message themes were used in the telephone than in the email context supports the idea that phone conversations may more likely be used to convey emotional information than email. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

International students Long-distance relationships Email Acculturative stress Family communication

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