Coming to America: need for acculturation and media use motives among indian sojourners in the US

Abstract

Many uses and gratifications scholars have called for more research on media use within various cultural contexts as a means of extending the understanding of motivations for media use and the resulting patterns of exposure. This study of 99 Asian Indian graduate students at a US university differentiates the mass media that these predominantly young, urban males used in India (prior to coming to the US) and in the US (after their arrival in the US). Via principal components analysis, the study also identifies eight motives for Indian students’ use of American television, including the motives of acculturation and reflection on values. The data show that need for acculturation is strongly correlated with the motives of acculturation and surveillance and moderately correlated with reflection on values and learning. Overall, motives for American television viewing shared 45% of their variance with need for acculturation, indicating the importance of the new culture's media in the acculturation process of sojourners.