Small worlds in a distant land: International newcomer students' local information behaviors in unfamiliar environments

Abstract

International students face various challenges in their new countries, but research is less clear about their challenges in information behaviors. This article fills this gap by examining information behaviors of international newcomer students during adjustment to local environments, that is, local information behavior (LIB). Drawing on prior work, we focus on the local co‐national context—the degree to which there are co‐nationals available in one's local environments—to analyze the LIBs of 149 first‐year graduate students and 57 follow‐up interviewees, who were classified into: International‐common group (students from China, India, and Korea—with many local co‐nationals), International‐less‐common group (students from other countries—with fewer local co‐nationals), and Domestic‐out‐of‐state group (students from other U.S. states; control group). We identify differences in international newcomer students' use of information sources during adjustment and the role that local co‐national contexts play in these differences. These results suggest ways that information scholars and practitioners might account for the influences of local co‐national contexts when examining information behaviors of internationally mobile students and designing systems and services for newcomers from around the world.

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