international communication research paper

International Communication Research Paper Topics

• Americanization of the Media
• Arab Satellite TV News
• BBC World Service
• Bertelsmann Corporation
• China Central Television Channel 9 (CCTV-9)
• Cultural Imperialism Theories
• Cultural Products as Tradable Services
• Deutsche Welle
• Francophonie
• Free Flow of Information
• Global Advertising Industry
• Global Satellite Communication
• Globalization Theories
• History of Global Media
• Hybridity Theories
• Independent Media Centers Network
• International Communication Agencies
• International News Reporting
• International Radio
• International Regulation of Internet
• International Television
• Korean Cultural Influence
• Kurdish International Broadcasting
• Le Monde Diplomatique
• Migrant Community Media
• Music Industry
• NAFTA and International Communication
• New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)
• News Corporation
• Public Relations in Global Firms
• Radio France Internationale
• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
• Samsung Corporation
• Security and Surveillance Agencies
• Sony Corporation
• Time Warner Inc.
• Tourism Industry
• Transnational Social Movement Media
• Vatican Radio
• Voice of America
• War Propaganda

Four Theories of the Press, by Siebert, Petersen and Schramm (1956), was the first major comparative media study. The theories in question were normative, the official views of media goals in four contrasting polities: authoritarian, libertarian, Soviet, and “social responsibility.” Comparative news studies have substantially revived recently.

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Another major stimulus to research was ‘third world’ development, often framed at the time by the modernization’ schema which held that unless the west’s modernity spread, global raw materials and markets risked Soviet/Chinese takeover. Lerner’s book, The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) and Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations (1962) were key texts.

Schiller’s series of studies of global media from 1969 onwards (e.g. Schiller 1991) challenged this schema. From the 1980s onwards, he argued emerging ICTs were being used to intensify transnational corporate hegemony. A second challenge came from Armand Mattelart (2000), who wrote on international advertising, international communication history, and multicultural policies, but paid more attention to cultural dynamics than Schiller.

Three Theories of International Communication

‘Cultural imperialism’ (Schiller, Mattelart) covered education, religion, business practice, consumerism, law, governmentality, dress, as well as media. The term framed the US as a global superpower pursuing cultural domination overseas. Tomlinson (1991) argued that cultural imperialism presumed that third world media users could not interpret western media fare in their own ways, and that the term’s popularity canalized discontent at modernity’s juggernaut. China’s and India’s global media industries, and Nigeria’s video-movie industry (Nollywood), considerably complicated these issues.

The ‘hybridization’ metaphor focused on how global audiences refract cultural imports (Kraidy 2005). Some Latin American scholars argued that Latin America’s history of Indigenous, European, and African exchange, and Mexican–US cultural exchanges, made the metaphor more compelling. The notion of ‘cultural proximity’, although critiqued for cultural essentialism, claimed that regional or linguistic resonances often rivaled foreign cultural imports’ attractiveness. The emergence of ‘Hallyu’, the ‘Korean Wave’ of media exports, complicated the picture further.

‘Globalization’ could mean cultural imperialism, modernity, postmodernity, or even the ascendancy of free-market dogma. The roles of computer networks, satellites, and global media firms were plainly central, as were key world cities. Some found the term over-stated for the media and information sectors.

Global Media Firms

Global media players such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bertelsmann, News Corp., Samsung, Sony and Time Warner Inc. (Fitzgerald 2012) usually have varied media interests (e.g., cinema, publishing, music, video games, theme parks). Advertising, public relations and marketing firms also play significant roles internationally (Sinclair 2012). The recorded music industry has three key global players (Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony Music).

This scenario marks a sea change from some decades earlier, when cultural policies were often run by government ministries. All these companies are considerably smaller in financial terms than General Motors or ExxonMobil. Nonetheless, although media products are tradable commodities, their cultural impact cannot be assessed simply by the money spent on them.

Global Media Policies

In the years before and since World War II, the US government worked in a sustained manner to promote the ‘free flow of information policy’. This challenged British domination of ocean cable traffic and its Reuters news agency. Attempts to forge partly noncommercial global policies emerged in the 1970s NWICO debates (Many Voices, One World, 1980/2004, the MacBride Report), and the 2003 and 2005 World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS). The international Internet Governance Forum has emphasized ‘multi-stakeholderism’, i.e. the public, not just states and corporations, has a compelling interest in framing Internet policies.

Certain trade regimes and international agencies influence transnational communication policies: the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NA FTA), the European Union, UNESCO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Within the EU, France has actively supported exempting cultural products trade from WTO rules (the so-called ‘cultural exception’), while the UK has militantly supported the US. Canada and South Korea, amongst others, have supported France’s stance. Global media and information policy has been marked by clashing agendas.

Global News Flows

The 1980 MacBride Report noted how most western news coverage (as now) emanated within the global north and reported on its doings. International news about the global south, when available at all, focused on disasters, natural or political. This made for a gravely under-informed planetary citizenry.

However, the turn of the millennium witnessed new international news interventions. Established stalwarts, such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America, CNN International, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, and Vatican Radio, were joined by Arab satellite TV news and entertainment channels, and China’s English-language global TV channel CCTV-9. Britain’s The Guardian newspaper could claim 16 million Internet readers worldwide.

Nonhegemonic International Communication Flows

Given the increasing activity of global social movements of many kinds, it appears likely that nonhegemonic transnational media may become a growing force. The emergence of the Qatar-based news broadcaster Al-Jazeera is an example. It has challenged the deferential state broadcast news of the Arabic-speaking world, and influential US government definitions of Middle Eastern affairs.

Perhaps the successful anti-apartheid movement (1948–94), challenging the white-minority regime which ran South Africa during those decades, could be defined as the first major transnational media campaign. In a series of countries, independent media, campaigning mainstream journalists, ongoing demonstrations, university teach-ins, media smuggled into and out of South Africa, the African National Congress’s Zambia radio station, very effectively combined together over time.

Bibliography:

• Curtin, M. & Shah, H. (eds.) (2010). Reorienting global communication: Indian and Chinese media beyond borders. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Fitzgerald, S. (2012) Corporations and cultural industries. New York: Lexington.
• Kraidy, M. (2005). Hybridity, or the cultural logic of globalization. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
• Lerner, D. (1958). The passing of traditional society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
• Mattelart, A. (2000). Networking the world: 1794–2000. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of innovations, 5th edn. Glencoe, NY: Free Press. (Original work published 1962).
• Schiller, H. (1991). Not yet a post-imperialist order. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8(1), 13–28.
• Siebert, F., Peterson, T., & Schramm, W. (1956). Four theories of the press. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Sinclair, J. (2012). Advertising, the media and globalization. London: Routledge.
• Tomlinson, J. (1991). Cultural imperialism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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International Communication Strategies of Chinese Radio and TV Networks pp 1–41 Cite as

Understanding International Communications

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In recent years, the process of globalisation has increased the opportunities for interactions between different countries and cultures, with the mass media playing a central role in building a country’s national image, sharing its culture, as well as maximising its influence around the globe.

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The Book of Documents is a collection of rhetorical prose, and served as the foundation of Chinese political philosophy for over 2,000 years. The Five Classics represent an important literary component of classical Confucian culture. They are: the Book of Odes ( Shi Jing ), Book of Documents ( Shang Shu ), Book of Rites ( Li Ji ), Book of Changes ( Yi Jing ), and Spring and Autumn Annals ( Chun Qiu ). More details are provided at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Documents and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_and_Five_Classics#Five_Classics .

This conceptualisation of ‘second-round coding’ draws upon the work of Liu and Zhang (2011, p. 41).

All these statistics are drawn from Wang (2006).

In the state-owned system, media institutions are incorporated within government units and are mainly funded by the state with very few advertisements so as to ensure their independence from business. PSB implies media serve the public rather than government or business interests, with financial support coming from TV license fees and limited advertisements. This model is exemplified by the BBC. In the case of the market model, media organisations are driven by commercial interests. For more details of these three models of media systems, please see Liu and Zhang (2011, p. 63).

The I Ching is rendered, and pronounced, as Yi Jing in pinyin, the form of Romanisation used in modern China.

The ‘Matthew Effect’ is a phenomenon whereby ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. It has been widely applied to the disciplines of social psychology, pedagogy, finance and science. Its name is taken from a verse in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’ (Matthew, 25:29, King James Version).

See more at: http://www.millwardbrown.com/global-navigation/news/press-releases/full-release/2015/05/26/apple-overtakes-google-for-the-top-spot-in-the-10th-annual-brandz-top-100-most-valuable-global-brands-ranking .

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International communication.

The definition of “international communication” is constantly in flux. Whether we have in view sociologist Émile Durkheim’s suggestion in his classic work Elementary forms of religious life (1917) that relations between different Aboriginal tribes constituted international communication, or historians’ and political scientists’ studies of diplomacy among modern nation-states, or the rush of contemporary theorizing on globalization processes and the roles of communication media within them, it is wise to be cautious before consecrating our assumptions as to how this field of study should be framed. In order to try to avoid that trap, this article begins with a brief history of this research area. It will mainly focus on more recent research, which arguably has been conducted within ten categories. At the end, brief pointers will be thrown up to suggest some ongoing problems.

The ten proposed categories are: (1) theories of international communication; (2) core international communication processes; (3) global media firms; (4) global media policies; (5) global news flows; (6) world cinema; (7) development communication; (8) the Internet; (9) intellectual property law; and (10) nonhegemonic communication flows. Items 6 – 9 in this list have been organized under separate editorial categories, so will receive only passing attention here. Analysis of intercultural interpersonal communication is also highly relevant, but to date mostly takes place under the heading of nonmediated communication, so is reserved for entries under that aegis.

These categories are of course permeable. For example, Arab satellite TV news, the emergence of China’s Central Television Channel 9 (CCTV-9) global English-language TV news services, and the attempt to create a regional Latin American satellite service have implications both for the study of global news flows and processes, and for analyses that argue American cultural influence is saturating the globe. The global advertising industry has profound implications for the future of most media, over and above its intrinsic cultural influences (themselves almost infinitely disputable).

A critical issue requires flagging immediately, namely the distinction between “international” in the comparative sense (e.g., different national media systems), and in the rigorously global sense (e.g., global media firms such as Disney, or diasporic media that serve migrant communities). The distinction is useful, but may dissolve somewhat in the process of analyzing actual cases (Downing 1996). Do the global music industry, global public relations firms, and global tourism firms operate homogeneously because they are global, or is it essential for their success to have their operations molded by specific regional and local cultural realities? Comparative research might productively be conducted not only between nation-states or among minority-ethnic media projects in different places, but also within a single global media corporation.

A Brief History of International Communication Research

In terms of a concerted wave of interest in international communication, it would be fair to say that the propaganda operations of the great powers in the twentieth century’s two world wars were mostly responsible for generating sustained interest in this field.

Earlier Research Decades in The USA

Some of the best-known US founding names in communication research, such as political scientist Harold Lasswell, first addressed the propaganda issue early in the 1920s. The rise of dictatorships after World War I, their successful deployment of thennew media, and the emergence of the long Cold War after World War II entrenched this issue in government-funded research priorities. At that juncture, the research term of choice was “psychological warfare” rather than “propaganda,” because of its seemingly scientific and less biased connotation. Wilbur Schramm, another major US figure in the earlier history of communication research, was one of a number of individuals, including Daniel Lerner and Lucian Pye, who contributed many studies to this area, most of them government-classified at the time (Simpson 199).

Comparative media systems analysis received its first major book-length study in the USA in the shape of Four theories of the press (Siebert et al. 1956). The theories in question were normative, representing the supposedly official views of what media should strive to achieve in four contrasting polities: authoritarian, libertarian, Soviet, and “social responsibility.” “Authoritarian” and “Soviet” were distinguished from each other in terms of the readiness of sovietized dictatorships to harness media for political goals, rather than simply keep them from disturbing the political order, alleged to be their typical role in nonSoviet dictatorships. “Libertarian” meant a parallel free market in goods and ideas (not the rigorously free market philosophy of contemporary Libertarians). “Social responsibility” signified media, rather than simply being commercial enterprises or a state monopoly, as a public trust. Much critiqued in later decades for its Cold War and other assumptions, the book nonetheless provided a beginning for further comparative media research.

Given the competitive dynamic of the Cold War for global leadership, and perhaps especially the long furor within the political class in the west following China’s 1949 adhesion to the Soviet bloc, a third major stimulus to international communication research was “third world” development, often framed at the time, as Escobar has vitally demonstrated, by the “modernization” schema (Escobar 1994). Unless the west could assure “modernization,” the presumption went, more and more nations might fall under the Soviet–Chinese spell and risk being lost to the west. The most influential international media study proceeding from this assumption was Daniel Lerner’s 1958 analysis of Turkey and five Arab states, The passing of traditional society (Lerner 1958). Lerner defined media as pivotal to successful “modernization.” In 1962 his book was followed by Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of innovations, currently in its 5th edition (Rogers 1962/ 2003), which became virtually the “bible” of American foreign aid projects involving development communication on how to propagate “modernization” in practice in so-called underdeveloped societies.

Established Paradigms Attacked

Challenges to these international communication paradigms began to emerge at the close of the 1960s. The first was Herbert Schiller’s Mass communications and American empire (1969/1992), the first in a series of publications presenting a radically different perspective that culminated in his much-cited essay “Not yet a post-imperialist order” (Schiller 1991). In the 1980s Schiller’s work turned to the newly developing international circuits enabled by information technologies, adding to his earlier mass-oriented research. As opposed to the authors already cited, who saw US global involvement as fundamentally benign, Schiller argued that mass-exported US culture and new information technologies were part and parcel of US – later, transnational – global corporate hegemony and military interventionism.

A second challenge to the then-dominant paradigm came from research by Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart. Living in Chile since 1962 as representative of a Vatican project for development, he co-authored with his wife Michèle Mattelart an analysis of US-funded mainstream and local oppositional media during the 1970 – 1973 experiment in Marxist social democracy undertaken by Chile’s Popular Unity government. It was published first in Spanish (1973), then in French (1974), and finally in English (Mattelart & Mattelart 1980). It raised very basic issues, regarding the international politics of media communication in a situation of extreme crisis, which were far removed from the assumptions of political stability and economic affluence implicitly underpinning mainstream media research in the USA and western Europe.

Armand Mattelart’s and Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman’s Como leer al Pato Donald (“How to read Donald Duck”; 1971), an analysis of underlying conservative ideologies in Disney comic books published in Latin America, was another notable intervention from outside the globally dominant US communication research establishment. This book, despite the difficulty of its conceptual language, aroused deep passions. While the Chilean dictator who overthrew the Popular Unity government had all Spanish-language copies burned, the Disney Corporation nearly succeeded in getting the US Customs to ban the import of the English-language version, arguing it infringed their copyright. It was, nonetheless, translated into a dozen languages.

Schiller’s work was frequently dismissed by leading US communication researchers as either conspiratorial or implicitly pro-Soviet or both, but his analyses penetrated far and wide internationally, even among those who disagreed with them. Mattelart’s work, either singly or in combination with Michèle Mattelart, and heir to a Catholic social justice tradition, took longer to penetrate the Anglophone research community because of translation issues, but much of it is now translated into English. It is substantial, including studies of international advertising, Nicaraguan media during the Sandinista period (1979 –1989), the history of international communication, and communication and multicultural policies. His work pays much more attention to cultural dimensions than Schiller’s, which restricted itself to political economy. In many countries outside the USA at present, Schiller and Mattelart are at least as well-known as, and often more highly regarded than, Lerner, Siebert et al., Schramm, or Rogers.

Results and Newer Trends

Whatever position may be taken on the respective merits of these competing paradigms, there can be little doubt that the clash opened up the field of international communication to a much wider set of perspectives and arguments. Since then, and as an additional result of scholarly reflection and research on the momentous international potential of satellite communications and computer networks, the field has continued to grow apace.

Global communication policy initiatives, often targeted in some fashion on the ongoing crises of development around the planet, have further underscored the importance of international communication to the contemporary world. The rise of the global Internet and the spectacular global explosion of intellectual property issues in the digital communication era have equally pushed international communication issues increasingly to the top of the research agenda.

World Cinema

A paradox remains: world cinema, although perhaps the aspect of international communication to be studied earliest along with foreign diplomacy, was analyzed within a very singular framework in the west, at least until quite recently – one dominated by specialists trained in literary method. Thus, textual analysis of national cinemas or of individual film directors’ works was the primary focus. The political economy of global distribution and empirical studies of reception have only recently come to get the attention they equally deserved.

Indeed, the field long followed a certain global pecking order, with Hollywood center frame, along with the art cinemas of Europe, the Soviet bloc in its heyday, and Japan, whereas Indian, Latin American, Chinese, Arab, and African cinemas were barely recognized (some Iranian cinema work has recently been admitted to the canon). Cinema was frequently studied out of relationship to television, befitting its western-university definition as an art, in contradistinction to television, which was defined as a mass commercial product. For all these reasons, it is only with the emergence of cultural studies approaches, and the more recent revival of interest in cultural economy and the political economy of culture, that global cinema is coming to be integrated within the general flow of international communication research (e.g., Miller et al. 2005; Badley et al. 2006).

Recent International Communication Scholarship

Theories of international communication.

The three major “lenses” through which recent scholarship has sought to analyze international communication processes are cultural imperialism, cultural hybridization, and globalization.

The first of these three was central to the rather binary debates between mainstream US communication researchers summarized above. It came in different forms, with “media imperialism” being a perhaps more cautious subset of the larger term “cultural imperialism.” The latter could cover education, religion, business practice, consumerism, law, governmentality, dress, marriage customs, and still other cultural dimensions as well as media. The fundamental argument was that cultural transmission was an integral component of colonialism along with military conquest and economic exploitation, so that even after the demise of formal colonial rule in the post-World War II decades, the cultural impact established during colonial days was both intact and continually refreshed. The argument also incorporated the rise of the US as a global superpower, and proposed that it had followed in the footsteps of Britain and France in pursuing cultural domination. The roles of media for the US imperial project were argued to be all the more paramount as the twentieth century proceeded, and a media-saturated environment began to emerge. Nonetheless, it was possible, by using the term “media imperialism” as a metaphor for US global media influence, to acknowledge that reality without necessarily linking it to the larger claim that the USA is an empire.

The approach began to come under serious fire with John Tomlinson’s Cultural imperialism (1991). Tomlinson argued that the concept of cultural imperialism required two assumptions, the first being a directing center, a cultural imperialism planning agency so to speak, and the second that “third world” audiences and readers were peculiarly malleable and gullible, incapable of interpreting western media fare in their own ways in the light of their own cultural formations. Since these two assumptions were very far from proven, he proposed instead that discourses of cultural imperialism were a form of expressing discontent at the juggernaut of modernity and the widespread sense of impotence in its path. A detailed case study of a two-decade-long US cultural propaganda endeavor in western Europe provides a nuanced and highly illuminating counterpoint to both cultural imperialism theories and to Tomlinson’s critique (Saunders 1999).

The hybridization metaphor represented a different approach to critiquing the notion that western or US cultural imperialism was busy flattening all in its path, homogenizing everything, so-called McDonaldization. Instead, it insisted on a degree of agency among global audiences, not simply in Tomlinson’s sense of disputing global passivity in principle, but much more in researching just how global audiences massaged foreign cultural products and perspectives and hybridized them (Kraidy 2005). Argentinean sociologist Néstor García Canclini (1989/1995) is only one of a number of Latin American scholars to emphasize the forms of hybridization and cultural challenge evident in everyday life, derived from Latin America’s own long cultural history of Aboriginal, European, and African exchange, as well as more recent US cultural penetration. This is one of many instances that could be cited of how immersion in a non-western culture helps to frame scholarly research on international communication in important ways.

At the same time, both Kraidy and García Canclini stress how cultural hybridization does not evacuate asymmetrical power in a happy balance. Straubhaar (1991), in a muchcited article, argued fairly similarly that “cultural proximity” often counterbalanced the weight of US cultural exports in determining audience TV rankings, and defined Latin American media culture as one of asymmetrical interdependence with the USA. Sinclair, likewise, has developed arguments based upon the success or failure of television exports in particular geolinguistic regions, which may or may not be contiguous, as in the case of the Anglophone countries (Sinclair 1999). Overall, analysis of global television flows tends strongly to confirm these perspectives.

“Globalization” became a tremendous “buzzword” in the later 1990s and into the next decade, a sure sign that it meant different things to different scholars. For some it was virtually a synonym for cultural imperialism, for others for the spread of modernity or “postmodernity,” and for others its primary referent was economic, the spread either of free markets, or of fundamentalist free-market economic doctrine. However the term was defined, the roles of computer networks, satellites, and global media firms were plainly central to the processes under review, as was the growth of major cities as global communication nodes, “technopoles” (Castells 1996 –1998). At this point, too, contemporary urban geography and international communication scholarship frequently found themselves face to face. At the same time, some critics continued vigorously to dispute the utility of the term, especially as applied to the media and information sectors (Sparks 2007).

Core International Communication Processes

The overall fabric that recent international communication research has focused upon involves its historical antecedents, the growth of communication satellite uses, the advertising industry, public relations, the music industry, the tourism industry, international radio and television, global surveillance, and the thesis of Americanization. War propaganda closes the list.

The first entry noted is significant in relation to “globalization” theories, in the sense that rather too many discussions of the term presume it is self-evidently a very recent phenomenon. Its analysis of the initial phase in the latter nineteenth century of laying submarine oceanic cables for telegraphy, and later for telephony, is an important corrective to ahistorical analyses. Optical fiber oceanic cables continue to serve crucial roles alongside satellites. The entry also references recent historical scholarship that calls into question the notion of competitive colonialism as the driving force in the ocean cable-laying process.

The next four entries listed above – advertising, public relations, music, and tourism – are important correctives to conventional discussions of international communication in a different way. While considerable attention is almost always paid to television, then radio, and then satellites and cable, and more recently to the Internet, it is curious that advertising, in particular, with its centrality to media finance in most countries, is so often omitted. Public relations firms, commercial and political, are also crucial sources of global news as well as of the technology of winning elections (or attempting to) that is spreading across the planet.

The global music industry is often marginalized by older scholars as a youth culture phenomenon, which in significant part it is, but the question of precisely who is marginalizing whom in this process is worth considering carefully. The global tourism industry is on one level the point at which individuals and groups from different nations meet physically and in certain senses communicate with each other, though generally the communication is narrowly structured in terms of specific services, and often the construction of tourist enclaves is sharply different from life in general for local inhabitants. In all four cases, however, the concepts of cultural imperialism, hybridization, and globalization raise interesting questions about the international communication processes involved.

International radio broadcasting may look to some eyes rather passé in the twenty-first century, but that would likely signify the usual geographical location of the reader. Radio continued to be, at the latter end of the 2000s, the communication medium par excellence in most parts of the world and for much of the world’s public. Its relative cheapness, portability, and lack of literacy requirement would continue to keep it a very live option for many. Only in commercially advanced nations is radio basically an adjunct of the recorded music industry. Furthermore, in order to understand the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first, omitting the international radio broadcasters, whether the BBC World Service, Voice of America, Radio France Internationale. or still others, would seriously distort our grasp of global communication processes.

On a more somber note, international communication also involves mass surveillance, which digital technologies have made ever more sophisticated. Voice recognition and filtering software for telephony has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent decades, and email is very hard to protect against the really advanced decrypting devices available to security services (Bamford 2001). Closed circuit TV in public places has become routine in commercially advanced nations. The legitimation for this dramatic expansion has rested upon crime, undocumented immigration, and terrorism, all of them real, but policy debates continue to reverberate, with claims and counterclaims about the dividing line between protection and privacy (Lyon 2007).

War propaganda is hardly a new phenomenon (Knightley 2004), but most would concur that it developed newly exigent requirements during the two twentieth-century world wars and the Cold War. It took two forms, one the projection of external propaganda to the enemy nation, both to its general public and to its troops in combat, the other domestic propaganda, typically representing the enemy as subhuman and unnervingly aggressive. Dower’s remarkable study of the domestic propaganda processes in both the USA and Japan in the Pacific war confirms this (Dower 1986). The US propaganda apparatus represented the Japanese as rats, apes, and insects, and the Japanese apparatus portrayed the Americans as both vicious and effete.

Global Media Firms

The leading global players operate in multiple countries, even if they maintain head offices in one, and usually have a considerable variety of media interests (e.g., cinema, publishing, music, video games, theme parks), not only one. Contrasted with firms outside the media and information sector such as General Motors or ExxonMobil, these companies, though very large, are considerably smaller in financial terms. Nonetheless, although media products are tradable commodities, it would be conceptually sloppy even to try to establish a ratio of cultural impact to the quantity of money spent on producing, distributing, or using them.

These are not the only major global media firms, a number of which are discussed in other entries. Some Internet firms, notably Google at the time of writing, and computer firms (Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Sun Microsystems) play huge and seemingly ever-growing roles as well. Taken together, these corporations represent the leading players in the cultural and information industries sector worldwide. This marks a sea change from some decades earlier, when in many nations cultural and media policies were the province of Ministries of Information, Culture, and/or Communication.

The crucial question, almost certainly due to be debated for a considerable time to come, is how far this shift of communication power toward very large corporate enterprises on the international as well as national scale represents an expansion of citizenship options, or their decline. An effective answer to this question will require a careful disaggregation of the issues involved. From arguments summarized already, it is clear that many would dispute the argument that planetary cultural homogenization, whether commercial, consumerist, or Americanized, is overwhelmingly in process. The Korean cultural wave phenomenon is testimony to this, as are the dynamics of cultural exchange among Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Iwabuchi 2002). That, however, is not likely to be the end of the debate, since there are multiple other dimensions to citizenship and media than cultural flattening. In the end, the debate is likely to revolve around some version of the “social responsibility” thesis, namely are media suitably defined purely as commercial entities, or does the “public goods” argument rightly complicate their standing for democratic polities?

Global Media Policies

In the years before and since World War II, the US government worked in a sustained manner to promote the “free flow of information” policy. This was an attempt to challenge British domination of ocean cable traffic in particular, but also the ascendancy of Britain’s Reuters news agency. Then, over the 1970s, and again over the early 2000s, attempts were made to forge partly noncommercial global communication policies in the form of the New World Information and Communication Order proposals, and the 2003 and 2005 World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS).

There are also now a number of trade regimes and international agencies that have some influence, or the potential for it, over international and national communication policies, such as the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union, UNESCO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Of these, a number have historically served as forums for negotiating national economic priorities, and thus have been substantially influenced by major corporate lobbies. Others, such as UNESCO, ITU, WIPO, and ICANN, have a more mixed history, representing to a certain degree the concerns of transnational publics and social movements.

Within this context, the European Union is a uniquely ambitious experiment in multinational integration. The question of media and collective identity, whether “European,” national, or sub-national (e.g., Scotland, Catalunya), has continued to exercise EU communication policy discourses. Within Europe, France has provided a militant lead in favor of exempting cultural products from routine trade criteria (the so-called “cultural exception”), while the UK has actively supported the contrary position, in line with the US government. The results to date have been mixed and mostly tentative, often confused through being based upon political shibboleths rather than clear-headed analysis, and inevitably complicated by the continuing expansion of membership (Schlesinger 1997, 1999). NAFTA represents a very different case.

Francophonie consists of a cluster of sustained attempts over nearly 50 years by France, as a former colonial power, to combine defense of the French language and culture against the dominance of US culture. At the same time, the project was energetically supported in its earlier years by certain postcolonial leaders of newly independent states, notably by Léopold Senghor, first President of Senegal in 1960. Some have argued Francophonie to be Janus-faced, insistently resisting the tidal wave of US cultural products while content to oil the wheels of France’s neo-colonialist African policy. However, the organization’s recent overtures to Arabophone, Hispanophone, and Lusophone nations to encourage their involvement in projects to defend their own linguistic and cultural heritages may yet prove to be a significant vector in the global politics of culture and communication.

Thus, global media and information policy, like public policies of all types, has been marked by clashing agendas (Raboy 2002). Up through the early 1970s, it would be fair to say that the clashes were primarily those of national economic interest among those states with financial muscle, or the Cold War, or sometimes a combination of the two. In that decade, however, prompted by calls for a New International Economic Order to address the vast disparities between commercially advanced nations and the rest, pressure began to be voiced in international assemblies for a comparable restructuring of global media communications of all kinds. The digital technology era was at the doors, and the potential of new information and communication technologies for the global south’s development was already being debated. The chasm between the profusion of all forms of communication technology in the global north and their feeble distribution in the global south was, and remains, a major development issue.

After some time, a package of proposed communication policy shifts in favor of the global south was assembled by an international task force convened by UNESCO. They were presented in the 1980 MacBride Report, Many voices, one world (MacBride Commission 1980). The policy proposals came to be entitled the New World Information and Communication Order. They fell hostage, however, to a concerted hostile press campaign in the USA and the UK, whose governments withdrew from UNESCO in the mid-1980s, publicly citing the Report as a primary reason for doing so. There were internal weaknesses in the Report, notably its assumption that communication policy was exclusively a matter for national governments. Paradoxically, however, there was no proposal whatsoever in it for government licensing of journalists (a serious risk for press freedom), even though the hostile news media campaign in the USA assiduously asserted this to be one of its main planks. Nonetheless, the UNESCO process was a first step toward global public discussion of citizens’ communication needs and entitlements.

In the World Summits on the Information Society in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005), initiated by the United Nations and convened this time by the ITU, issues of global communication inequities resurfaced in the first fully international forums addressing them since the UNESCO debacle. This time, there emerged a very slight change, albeit resisted by a number of governments and corporations. The ITU at that point had but recently opened its doors to communication corporations as official participants, rather than only to states, for the first time in its over 100-year history. But the UN charge to the ITU had also signaled that “civil society” organizations should also have a voice in the WSIS deliberations. In a very small and often grudging way, this was conceded at the Summits.

All this could, no doubt, be read as simply an obscure exercise in acronym juggling. Notwithstanding, however, the impracticalities of global representation of the public interest outside of the conventional system of states (a process itself marked by considerable deficiencies), this could also be read as a first tentative step toward inclusive global policymaking for international communication. It remained to be seen what might be the next moves.

Global News Flows

These were one of the many global communication disparities articulated in the MacBride Report. The pattern was rather clear: most international news coverage emanated within the global north and reported on its doings. International news about the global south, when available at all, strongly tended to focus on disasters, natural or political. This made for an under-informed citizenry across the planet, paradoxically at a point in history when the world was becoming ever more economically and politically interconnected (Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998).

However, the turn of the millennium witnessed new international broadcasting interventions. Established stalwarts, such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America, CNN International, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, and Vatican Radio, were joined by Arab satellite news, China’s English-language global TV channel CCTV-9, and Latin America’s fledgling experiment, TeleSur.

These varied international projects raised challenging questions for conventional professional journalistic claims to objectivity, especially when the mission of a given broadcasting project was officially defined as “public diplomacy” on behalf of a nation-state. The differences in their news agendas were significant. Sometimes they were even visible within one and the same organization: following a basic editorial decision some months previously, CNN International broadcast pictures of wounded and dead Iraqi civilians following the US invasion in 2003, while CNN Domestic avoided doing so. On the face of it, however, the international sources of supply of broadcast news were expanding. It remained to be seen whether the public would take the trouble on a regular basis to compare more than one such source.

Nonhegemonic International Communication Flows

So far the focus has been on mainstream channels of international communication. The picture would be seriously incomplete without reviewing other media projects outside these conventional channels. In the twenty-first century mediascape, and given the increasing activity of global social movements of many kinds, it appeared likely that smaller media would not only continue to operate, but would become a growing force.

Already there was evidence of the intensification of women’s participation in these nonhegemonic projects, a vector that sharply distinguished this zone of the mediascape from mainstream media. The tremendous increase in global labor migration across borders over recent decades, and the widespread emergence of settled diasporic communities, had as one effect the creation of many media projects linking them with their countries of origin as well as engaging with their new locations. The Kurds, mostly settled in eastern Turkey, but with significant enclaves in Syria, Iraq, and Iran, had a conflicted history of trying to use satellite broadcasting to connect with their migrant communities in western Europe as well as to combat the Turkish state’s long ban on the use of Kurdish in broadcasting inside Turkey.

The emergence of the Qatar-based news broadcaster Al-Jazeera was a further example of nonhegemonic international communication, in two senses: it challenged the conventional and deferential state broadcast news services of the Arabic-speaking world, and it also challenged official US government definitions of Middle Eastern affairs. The TeleSur project, originating in Venezuela, sought to fulfill a somewhat analogous role in the Latin American region.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the latter now defunct, served a distinct role during the postwar decades up to the end of the Cold War. In both cases, the commitment was absent to a neutral and bland style of news reporting that largely characterized the BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle. Both stations set themselves the particular task of functioning, not as the Voice of America – even though they were largely CIA-funded – but as though they were domestic news services inside the Soviet bloc nations, yet operating without Soviet censorship. They quite often broadcast underground texts from the clandestine opposition. Thus, their style often was highly confrontational, and sometimes appreciated more inside the Soviet bloc than the careful cadences of the BBC World Service.

Two more examples will suffice of the nonhegemonic international media sector. First, Le Monde Diplomatique is a French monthly world affairs magazine some 50 years old, which today appears in 26 languages, has a global readership of some 2 million, and appears in some countries on paper, in others digitally. Its contents are in-depth feature articles on countries and issues around the world, written partly by its very highly educated editorial staff, and partly by university specialists in a variety of countries. Over the past 30 years, “Diplo” has provided a consistent location in which the inequalities and inequities between global north and south are at center stage and exhaustively analyzed. It has served over the past decade and more as the global social justice movement’s foreign affairs or foreign policy magazine.

The second example is the Independent Media Centers movement. Emerging at the 1999 WTO confrontations in Seattle, by 2007 it had grown to number toward 200 hyperlinked nodes of social justice activists around the world, though mostly concentrated in North America and western Europe. Sites varied in productivity, but normally ran frequently updated and interlinked news stories on challenges to global and national capitalist institutions, and very often on the repression these met. Photo, audio, and video files were routinely used. English was the predominant language, but national and in some cases sub-national languages were also visible on a number of sites. Each site was independent, and only if taken over by a group radically hostile to its global social justice mission, or engaging in campaigning on behalf of a particular political organization, would the site be de-linked from the others.

International communication research continues to be hampered by the monolingualism of many researchers, especially in Anglophone universities. This means that research achievements and insights from many countries do not enrich multinational scholarly dialogue to the degree they should. It is also a field poorly represented or not at all, to the time of writing, in most standard undergraduate communication textbooks used in the USA, which discourages the flow of future US researchers to this area in a field the USA has not ceased to dominate. Its importance in our shrinking planet, for good or for ill, remains unabated.

References:

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Language and communication in international students’ adaptation: a bibliometric and content analysis review

Michał wilczewski.

1 Faculty of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Dobra 55, 00-312 Warsaw, Poland

2 Department of Economics and Business Administration, University of Ariel, 40700 Ariel, Israel

3 School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Gimlemoen 25, 4630 Kristiansand, Norway

This article systematically reviews the literature (313 articles) on language and communication in international students’ cross-cultural adaptation in institutions of higher education for 1994–2021. We used bibliometric analysis to identify the most impactful journals and articles, and the intellectual structure of the field. We used content analysis to synthesize the results within each research stream and suggest future research directions. We established two major research streams: second-language proficiency and interactions in the host country. We found inconclusive results about the role of communication with co-nationals in students’ adaptation, which contradicts the major adaptation theories. New contextualized research and the use of other theories could help explain the contradictory results and develop the existing theories. Our review suggests the need to theoretically refine the interrelationships between the interactional variables and different adaptation domains. Moreover, to create a better fit between the empirical data and the adaptation models, research should test the mediating effects of second-language proficiency and the willingness to communicate with locals. Finally, research should focus on students in non-Anglophone countries and explore the effects of remote communication in online learning on students’ adaptation. We document the intellectual structure of the research on the role of language and communication in international students’ adaptation and suggest a future research agenda.

Introduction

One of the consequences of globalization is the changing landscape of international higher education. Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in the number of international students, that is, those who have crossed borders for the purpose of study (OECD, 2021a ), from 1.9 million in 1997 to over 6.1 million in 2019 (UIS Statistics, 2021 ). Even students who are motivated to develop intercultural competence by studying abroad (Jackson, 2015 ) face several challenges that prevent them from benefitting fully from that experience. Examples of these challenges include language and communication difficulties, cultural and educational obstacles affecting their adaptation, socialization, and learning experiences (Andrade, 2006 ), psychological distress (Smith & Khawaja, 2011 ), or social isolation and immigration and visa extension issues caused by Covid-19 travel restrictions (Hope, 2020 ).

Cross-cultural adaptation theories and empirical research (for reviews, see Andrade, 2006 ; Smith & Khawaja, 2011 ) confirm the critical importance of foreign-language and communication skills and transitioning to the host culture for a successful academic and social life. Improving our understanding of the role of foreign-language proficiency and communication in students’ adaptation is important as the number of international students in higher education worldwide is on the rise. This increase has been accompanied by a growing number of publications on this topic over the last decade (see Fig.  1 ). Previous reviews of the literature have identified foreign-language proficiency and communication as predictors of students’ adaptation and well-being in various countries (Smith & Khawaja, 2011 ). The most recent reviews (Jing et al., 2020 ) list second-language acquisition and cross-cultural adaptation as among the most commonly studied topics in international student research. However, to date, there are no studies specifically examining the role of language and communication in international students’ adaptation (henceforth “language and communication in student adaptation”). This gap is especially important given recent research promoting students’ self-formation (Marginson, 2014 ) and reciprocity between international and domestic students (Volet & Jones, 2012 ). The results challenge the traditional “adjustment to the host culture” paradigm whereby international students are treated as being out of sync with the host country’s norms (Marginson, 2014 ). Thus, this article differs from prior research by offering a systematic and in-depth review of the literature on language and communication in student adaptation using bibliometric co-citation analysis and qualitative content analysis. Our research has a methodological advantage in using various bibliometric tools, which should improve the validity of the results.

Yearly publication of articles on language and communication in student adaptation (

Source: HistCite). Note . TLC, total local citations received; TGC, total global citations received; Articles, number of articles published in the field; International Students, number (in millions) of international students worldwide (UIS Statistics, 2021 )

We focus on several questions:

• What are the most impactful journals and articles about the role of language and communication in student adaptation?
• What is the thematic structure of the research in the field?
• What are the leading research streams investigating language and communication in student adaptation?
• What are the effects of language and communication on student adaptation?
• What are the future research directions?

After introducing the major concepts related to language and communication in student adaptation and the theoretical underpinnings of the field, we present our methodology. Using bibliometric and content analysis, we track the development of the field and identify the major themes, research streams, and studies that have shaped the state-of-the art and our current knowledge about the role of language and communication in student adaptation. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research.

Defining the concepts and theories related to language and communication in student adaptation

Concepts related to language and communication.

Culture is a socially constructed reality in which language and social practices interact to construct meanings (Burr, 2006 ). In this social constructionist perspective, language is viewed as a form of social action. Intertwined with culture, it allows individuals to communicate their knowledge about the world, as well as the assumptions, opinions, and viewpoints they share with other people (Kramsch, 1998 ). In this sense, people identify themselves and others through the use of language, which allows them to communicate their social and cultural identity (Kramsch, 1998 ).

Intercultural communication refers to the process of constructing shared meaning among individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds (Piller, 2007 ). Based on the research traditions in the language and communication in student adaptation research, we view foreign or second-language proficiency , that is, the skill allowing an individual to manage communication interactions in a second language successfully (Gallagher, 2013 ), as complementary to communication (Benzie, 2010 ).

Cross-cultural adaptation

The term adaptation is used in the literature interchangeably with acculturation , adjustment , assimilation , or integration . Understood as a state, cultural adaptation refers to the degree to which people fit into a new cultural environment (Gudykunst and Hammer, 1988 ), which is reflected in their psychological and emotional response to that environment (Black, 1990 ). In processual terms, adaptation is the process of responding to the new environment and developing the ability to function in it (Kim, 2001 ).

The literature on language and communication in student adaptation distinguishes between psychological, sociocultural, and academic adaptation. Psychological adaptation refers to people’s psychological well-being, reflected in their satisfaction with relationships with host nationals and their functioning in the new environment. Sociocultural adaptation is the individual’s ability to fit into the interactive aspects of the new cultural environment (Searle and Ward, 1990 ). Finally, academic adaptation refers to the ability to function in the new academic environment (Anderson, 1994 ). We will discuss the results of the research on language and communication in student adaptation with reference to these adaptation domains.

Theoretical underpinnings of language and communication in student adaptation

We will outline the major theories used in the research on international students and other sojourners, which has recognized foreign-language skills and interactions in the host country as critical for an individual’s adaptation and successful international experience.

The sojourner adjustment framework (Church, 1982 ) states that host-language proficiency allows one to establish and maintain interactions with host nationals, which contributes to one’s adaptation to the host country. In turn, social connectedness with host nationals protects one from psychological distress and facilitates cultural learning.

The cultural learning approach to acculturation (Ward et al., 2001 ) states that learning culture-specific skills allows people to handle sociocultural problems. The theory identifies foreign-language proficiency (including nonverbal communication), communication competence, and awareness of cultural differences as prerequisites for successful intercultural interactions and sociocultural adaptation (Ward et al., 2001 ). According to this approach, greater intercultural contact results in fewer sociocultural difficulties (Ward and Kennedy, 1993 ).

Acculturation theory (Berry, 1997 , 2005 ; Ward et al., 2001 ) identifies four acculturation practices when interacting with host nationals: assimilation (seeking interactions with hosts and not maintaining one’s cultural identity), integration (maintaining one’s home culture and seeking interactions with hosts), separation (maintaining one’s home culture and avoiding interactions with hosts), and marginalization (showing little interest in both maintaining one’s culture and interactions with others) (Berry, 1997 ). Acculturation theory postulates that host-language skills help establish supportive social and interpersonal relationships with host nationals and, thus, improve intercultural communication and sociocultural adjustment (Ward and Kennedy, 1993 ).

The anxiety/uncertainty management (AUM) theory (Gudykunst, 2005 ; Gudykunst and Hammer, 1988 ) states that intercultural adjustment is a function of one’s ability to cope with anxiety and uncertainty caused by interactions with hosts and situational processes. People’s ability to communicate effectively depends on their cognitive resources (e.g., cultural knowledge), which helps them respond to environmental demands and ease their anxiety.

The integrative theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation (Kim, 2001 ) posits that people’s cultural adaptation is reflected in their functional fitness, meaning, the degree to which they have internalized the host culture’s meanings and communication symbols, their psychological well-being, and the development of a cultural identity (Kim, 2001 ). Communication with host nationals improves cultural adaptation by providing opportunities to learn about the host country’s society and culture, and developing intercultural communication competence that includes the ability to receive and interpret comprehensible messages in the host environment.

The intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954 ; Pettigrew, 2008 ) states that contact between two distinct groups reduces mutual prejudice under certain conditions: when groups have common goals and equal status in the social interaction, exhibit intergroup cooperation, and have opportunities to become friends. Intercultural contact reduces prejudice toward and stereotypical views of the cultural other and provides opportunities for cultural learning (Allport, 1954 ).

These theories provide the theoretical framework guiding the discussion of the results synthesized through the content analysis of the most impactful articles in the field.

Methodology

Bibliometric and content analysis methods.

We used a mixed-method approach to review the research on language and communication in student adaptation for all of 1994–2021. This timeframe was informed by the data extraction process described in the next section. Specifically, we conducted quantitative bibliometric analyses such as co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and conceptual thematic mapping, as well as qualitative content analysis to explore the research questions (Bretas & Alon, 2021 ).

Bibliometric methods use bibliographic data to identify the structures of scientific fields (Zupic and Čater, 2015 ). Using these methods, we can create an objective view of the literature by making the search and review process transparent and reproducible (Bretas and Alon, 2021 ). First, we measured the impact of the journals and articles by retrieving data from HistCite concerning the number of articles per journal and citations per article. We analyzed the number of total local citations (TLC) per year, that is, the number of times an article has been cited by other articles in the same literature (313 articles in our sample). We then analyzed the total global citations (TGC) each article received in the entire Web of Science (WoS) database. We also identified the trending articles in HistCite by calculating the total citation score (TLCe) at the end of the year covered in the study (mid-2021). This score rewards articles that received more citations within the last three years (i.e., up to the beginning of 2018). Using this technique, we can determine the emerging topics in the field because it considers not only articles with the highest number of citations received over a fixed period of time, but also those that have been cited most frequently in recent times (Alon et al., 2018 ).

Second, to establish a general conceptual structure of the field, we analyzed the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords using VOS software. Next, based on the authors’ keywords, we plotted a conceptual map using Biblioshiny (a tool for scientific mapping analysis that is part of the R bibliometrix-package) to identify motor, basic, niche, and emerging/declining themes in the field (Bretas and Alon, 2021 ).

Third, to determine specific research streams and map patterns within the field (Alon et al., 2018 ), we used the co-citation mapping techniques in HistCite that analyze and visualize citation linkages between articles (Garfield et al., 2006 ) over time.

Next, we used content analysis to synthesize the results from the 31 most impactful articles in the field. We analyzed the results within each research stream and discussed them in light of the major adaptation theories to suggest future research directions and trends within each research stream (Alon et al., 2018 ). Content analysis allows the researcher to identify the relatively objective characteristics of messages (Neuendorf, 2002 ). Thus, this technique enabled us to verify and refine the results produced by the bibliometric analysis, with the goal of improving their validity.

Data extraction

We extracted the bibliographic data from Clarivate Analytics’ WoS database that includes over 21,000 high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly journals (as of July 2020 from clarivate.libguides.com). We adopted a two-stage data extraction approach (Alon et al., 2018 ; Bretas and Alon, 2021 ). Table ​ Table1 1 describes the data search and extraction processes.

Keyword search in WoS

First, in June 2021, we used keywords that would best cover the researched topic by searching for the following combinations of terms: (a) “international student*” OR “foreign student*” OR “overseas student*” OR “study* abroad” OR “international education”—to cover international students as a specific sojourner group; (b) “language*” and “communicat*”—to cover research on foreign-language proficiency as well as communication issues; and (c) “adapt*” OR “adjust*” OR “integrat*” OR “acculturat*”—to cover the adaptation aspects of the international students’ experience. However, given that cross-cultural adaptation is reflected in an individual’s functional fitness, psychological well-being, and development of a cultural identity (Kim, 2001 ), we included two additional terms in the search: “identit*” OR “satisf*”—to cover the literature on the students’ identity issues and satisfaction in the host country. Finally, based on a frequency analysis of our data extracted in step 2, we added “cultur* shock” in step 3 to cover important studies on culture shock as one of critical aspects of cross-cultural adaptation (Gudykunst, 2005 ; Pettigrew, 2008 ; Ward et al., 2001 ). After refining the search by limiting the data to articles published in English, the extraction process yielded 921 sources in WoS.

In the second stage, we refined the extraction further through a detailed examination of all 921 sources. We carefully read the articles’ abstracts to identify those suitable for further analysis. If the abstracts did not contain one or more of the three major aspects specified in the keyword search (i.e., international student, language and communication, adaptation), we studied the whole article to either include or exclude it. We did not identify any duplicates, but we removed book chapters and reviews of prior literature that were not filtered out by the search in WoS. Moreover, we excluded articles that (a) reported on students’ experiences outside of higher education contexts; (b) dealt with teaching portfolios, authors’ reflective inquiries, or anecdotal studies lacking a method section; (c) focused on the students’ experience outside the host country or on the experience of other stakeholders (e.g., students’ spouses, expatriate academics); (d) used the terms “adaptation,” “integration,” or “identity” in a sense different from cultural adaptation (e.g., adaptation of a syllabus/method/language instruction; integration of research/teaching methods/technology; “professional” but not “cultural” identity); or (e) used language/communication as a dependent rather than an independent variable. This process yielded 313 articles relevant to the topic. From them, we extracted the article’s title, author(s) names and affiliations, journal name, number, volume, page range, date of publication, abstract, and cited references for bibliometric analysis.

In a bibliometric analysis, the article is the unit of analysis. The goal of the analysis is to demonstrate interconnections among articles and research areas by measuring how many times the article is (co)cited by other articles (Bretas & Alon, 2021 ).

Bibliometric analysis

Most relevant journals and articles.

We addressed research question 1 regarding the most impactful journals and articles about the role of language and communication in student adaptation by identifying the most relevant journals and articles. Figure  2 lists the top 20 journals publishing in the field. The five most influential journals in terms of the number of local and global citations are as follows: International Journal of Intercultural Relations (79 and 695 citations, respectively), Journal of Studies in International Education (28 and 343 citations, respectively), Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (14 and 105 citations, respectively), Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (13 and 302 citations, respectively), and Higher Education (11 and 114 citations, respectively),

Top 20 journals publishing on language and communication in student adaptation (

Source: HistCite). Note . TLC, total local citations received; TLC/t, total local citations received per year; TGC, total global citations received; Articles, number of articles published in the field

Table ​ Table2 lists 2  lists the 20 most influential and trending articles as measured by, respectively, local citations (TLC) and trending local citations at the end of the period covered (TLCe), that is, mid-2021. The most locally cited article was a qualitative study of Asian students’ experiences in New Zealand by Campbell and Li ( 2008 ) (TLC = 12). That study, which linked host-language proficiency with student satisfaction and effective communication in academic contexts, also received the highest number of global citations per year (TGC/t = 7.86). The most influential article in terms of total local citations per year was a quantitative study by Akhtar and Kröner-Herwig ( 2015 ) (TLC/t = 1.00) who linked students’ host-language proficiency, prior international experience, and age with acculturative stress among students in Germany. Finally, Sam’s ( 2001 ) quantitative study, which found no relationship between host-language and English proficiency and having a local friend on students’ satisfaction with life in Norway, received the most global citations (TGC = 115).

Ranking of the 20 most impactful and trending articles (sorted by TLC)

All indices retrieved from HistCite: TLC , total local citations received; TLC/t , average local citations received per year; TGC , total global citations received; TGC/t , average global citations received per year; TLC/e , trending local citations at the end of the period covered

The most trending article (TLCe = 7) was a quantitative study by Duru and Poyrazli ( 2011 ) who considered the role of social connectedness, perceived discrimination, and communication with locals and co-nationals in the sociocultural adaptation of Turkish students in the USA. The second article with the most trending local citations (TLCe = 5) was a qualitative study by Sawir et al. ( 2012 ) who focused on host-language proficiency as a barrier to sociocultural adaptation and communication in the experience of students in Anglophone countries.

Keyword co-occurrence analysis

We addressed research question 2 regarding the thematic structure of the research in the field by analyzing the authors’ keyword co-occurrences to establish the thematic structure of the field (Bretas and Alon, 2021 ; Donthu et al., 2020 ). Figure  3 depicts the network of keywords that occurred together in at least five articles between 1994 and 2021. The nodes represent keywords, the edges represent linkages among the keywords, and the proximity of the nodes and the thickness of the edges represent how frequently the keywords co-occurred (Donthu et al., 2020 ). The analysis yielded two even clusters with 17 keywords each. Cluster 1 represents the primary focus on the role of language proficiency in student adaptation. It includes keywords such as “language proficiency,” “adaptation,” “acculturative stress,” “culture shock,” and “challenges.” Cluster 2 represents the focus on the role of intercultural communication and competence in student adaptation. It includes keywords such as “intercultural communication,” “intercultural competence,” “academic/psychological/sociocultural adaptation,” and “transition.”

Authors’ keyword co-occurrence analysis (

Source: VOS)

Conceptual thematic map

Based on the authors’ keywords, we plotted a conceptual map (see Fig.  4 ) using two dimensions. The first is density , which indicates the degree of development of the themes as measured by the internal associations among the keywords. The second is centrality , which indicates the relevance of the themes as measured by the external associations among the keywords. The map shows four quadrants: (a) motor themes (high density and centrality), (b) basic themes (low density and high centrality), (c) niche themes (high density and low centrality), and (d) emerging/declining themes (low density and centrality) (Bretas & Alon, 2021 ). The analysis revealed that motor themes in the field are studies of Chinese students’ experiences and student integration. Unsurprisingly, the basic themes encompass most topics related to language in student adaptation. Research examining the perspective of the students’ parents with regard to their children’s overseas experience exemplifies a niche theme. Finally, “international medical students” and “learning environment” unfold as emerging/declining themes. To determine if the theme is emerging or declining, we analyzed bibliometric data on articles relating to medical students’ adaptation and students’ learning environment. We found that out of 19 articles on medical students published in 13 journals (10 medicine/public health-related), 15 (79%) articles were published over the last five years (2016–2021), which clearly suggests an emerging trend. The analysis of authors’ keywords yielded only three occurrences of the keyword “learning environment” in articles published in 2012, 2016, and 2020, which may suggest an emerging trend. To further validate this result, we searched for this keyword in titles and abstracts and identified eight relevant articles published between 2016 and 2020, which supports the emerging trend.

Conceptual thematic map (

Source: Biblioshiny)

Citation mapping: research streams

We addressed research question 3 regarding the leading research streams investigating language and communication in student adaptation by using co-citation mapping techniques to reveal how the articles in our dataset are co-cited over time. To produce meaningful results that would not trade depth for breadth in our large dataset (313 articles), we limited the search to articles with TGC ≥ 10 and TLC ≥ 3. These thresholds yielded the 31 articles (10% of the dataset) that are most frequently cited within and outside the dataset, indicating their driving force in the field. We analyzed these 31 articles further because their number corresponds with the suggested range of the most-cited core articles for mapping in HistCite (Garfield et al., 2006 ).

Figure  5 presents the citation mapping of these 31 articles. The vertical axis shows how the articles have been co-cited over time. Each node represents an article, the number in the box represents the location of the article in the entire dataset, and the size of the box indicates the article’s impact in terms of TLCs. The arrows indicate the citing direction between two articles. A closer distance between two nodes/articles indicates their similarity. Ten isolated articles in Fig.  5 have not been co-cited by other articles in the subsample of 31 articles.

Citation mapping of articles on language and communication in student adaptation (

Source: HistCite)

A content analysis of these 31 articles points to two major and quite even streams in the field: (a) “ second-language proficiency ” (16 articles) and (b) “ interactions in the host country ” involving second-language proficiency, communication competence, intercultural communication, and other factors (15 articles). We clustered the articles based on similar conceptualizations of language and communication and their role in student adaptation. As Fig.  5 illustrates, the articles formed distinct but interrelated clusters. The vertical axis indicates that while studies focusing solely on second-language proficiency and host-country interactions have developed relatively concurrently throughout the entire timespan, a particular interest in host-country interactions occurred in the second decade of research within the field (between 2009 and 2013). The ensuing sections present the results of the content analysis of the studies in each research stream, discussing the results in light of the major theories outlined before.

Content analysis

We sought to answer research question 4 regarding the effects of language and communication on student adaptation by synthesizing the literature within the previously established two research streams. The concept map in Fig.  6 illustrates the predictive effects of second-language proficiency and host-country interactions on various adaptation domains. Table ​ Table4 4 in the Appendix presents a detailed description of the synthesis and lists studies reporting these effects, underscoring inconclusive results.

A concept map synthesizing research on language and communication in student adaptation

A synthesis of the literature on language and communication in student adaptation

(+) and (-) signify the positive and negative direction of the effect, respectively.

Second-language proficiency

This research stream focuses on language barriers and the role of foreign-language proficiency in student adaptation. Having host-language proficiency predicts less acculturative stress (Akhtar and Kröner-Herwig, 2015 ), while limited host-language proficiency inhibits communication with locals and academic integration (Cao et al., 2016 ). These results are in line with the acculturation theory (Berry, 1997 , 2005 ; Ward et al., 2001 ) and the communication and cross-cultural adaptation theory (Kim, 2001 ). Cross ( 1995 ) suggested that social skills predict sociocultural rather than psychological (perceived stress, well-being) adaptation (Searle and Ward, 1990 ). Indeed, several qualitative studies have explained that the language barrier affects sociocultural adaptation by preventing students from establishing contacts with host nationals (Wang and Hannes, 2014 ), developing meaningful relationships (Sawir et al., 2012 ), and limiting occasions for cultural learning (Trentman, 2013 ), supporting the acculturation theory (Anderson, 1994 ; Church, 1982 ; Searle and Ward, 1990 ).

Moreover, insufficient host-language proficiency reduces students’ satisfaction by hampering their communication, socialization, and understanding of lectures in academic contexts (Campbell and Li, 2008 ). Similarly, language affects academic adaptation in students who have difficulty communicating with domestic students (Young and Schartner, 2014 ) or when used as a tool in power struggles, limiting students’ opportunities to speak up in class and participate in discussions or decision-making (Shi, 2011 ). Students who have limited host-language proficiency tend to interact with other international students, which exacerbates their separation from domestic students (Sawir et al., 2012 ). These findings again confirm the theories of acculturation (Berry, 1997 ; Ward et al., 2001 ) and communication and cross-cultural adaptation (Kim, 2001 ).

With regard to the acculturation theory (Berry, 1997 ; Ward and Kennedy, 1999 ), we found inconclusive results concerning the impact of foreign-language skills on students’ satisfaction and adaptation. Specifically, some studies (e.g., Sam, 2001 ; Ying and Liese, 1994 ) found this effect to be non-significant when tested in regression models. One explanation for this result might be the indirect effect of language on adaptation. For instance, Yang et al. ( 2006 ) established that host-language proficiency mediated the relationship between contact with host nationals and the psychological and sociocultural adjustment of students in Canada. Swami et al. ( 2010 ) reported that better host-language skills among Asian students in Britain predicted their adaptation partly because they had more contacts with host nationals. In turn, Meng et al. ( 2018 ) found that the relationship between foreign-language proficiency and social and academic adaptation was fully mediated by global competence (understood as “intercultural competence” or “global mindset”) in Chinese students in Belgium.

Interactions in the host country

The second research stream comprises studies taking a broader look at language and communication in student adaptation by considering both individual and social interaction contexts: second-language (host-language and English) proficiency; willingness to communicate in the second language; communication interactions with domestic and international students, host nationals, and co-nationals; social connectedness (i.e., a subjective awareness of being in a close relationship with the social world; Lee and Robbins, 1998 ; and integrative motivation (i.e., a positive affective disposition towards the host community; Yu, 2013 .

Host-language proficiency predicts academic (Hirai et al., 2015 ; Yu, 2013 ), psychological (Hirai et al., 2015 ; Rui and Wang, 2015 ), and sociocultural adaptation (Brown, 2009 ; Duru and Poyrazli, 2011 ), confirming the acculturation theory (Ward et al., 2001 ). However, although some studies (Hirai et al., 2015 ; Yu, 2013 ) confirmed the impact of host-language proficiency on academic adaptation, they found no such impact on sociocultural adaptation. Yu’s ( 2013 ) study reported that sociocultural adaptation depends on academic adaptation rather than on host-language proficiency. Moreover, host-language proficiency increases the students’ knowledge of the host culture, reduces their uncertainty, and promotes intercultural communication (Gallagher, 2013 ; Rui and Wang, 2015 ), supporting the central aspects of the AUM theory (Gudykunst, 2005 ).

In turn, by enabling communication with academics and peers, second-language proficiency promotes academic (Yu and Shen, 2012 ) and sociocultural adaptation, as well as social satisfaction (Perrucci and Hu, 1995 ). It also increases the students’ willingness to communicate in non-academic contexts. This willingness mediates the relationship between second-language proficiency and cross-cultural difficulties among Asian students in England (Gallagher, 2013 ). This finding may explain inconclusive results concerning the relationship between second-language proficiency and cultural adaptation. It appears that second-language proficiency alone is insufficient for successful adaptation. This proficiency should be coupled with the students’ willingness to initiate intercultural communication to cope with communication and cultural difficulties, which is compatible with both the AUM theory and Kim’s ( 2001 ) communication and cross-cultural adaptation theory.

As mentioned before, host-language proficiency facilitates adaptation through social interactions. Research demonstrates that communication with domestic students predicts academic satisfaction (Perrucci and Hu, 1995 ) and academic adaptation (Yu and Shen, 2012 ), confirming Kim’s ( 2001 ) theory. Moreover, the frequency of interaction (Zimmermann, 1995 ) and direct communication with host nationals (Rui and Wang, 2015 ) predict adaptation and reduce uncertainty, supporting the AUM theory. Zhang and Goodson ( 2011 ) found that social interactions with host nationals mediate the relationship between adherence to the host culture and sociocultural adaptation difficulties, confirming the acculturation theory (Berry, 1997 ), the intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954 ; Pettigrew, 2008 ), and the culture learning approach in acculturation theory (Ward et al., 2001 ).

In line with the intergroup contact theory, social connectedness with host nationals predicts psychological and sociocultural adaptation (e.g., Hirai et al., 2015 ; Zhang and Goodson, 2011 ), confirming the sojourner adjustment framework (Church, 1982 ) and extending the acculturation framework (Ward and Kennedy, 1999 ) that recognizes the relevance of social connectedness for sociocultural adaptation only.

Research on interactions with co-nationals has produced inconclusive results. Some qualitative studies (Pitts, 2009 ) revealed that communication with co-nationals enhances students’ sociocultural adaptation and psychological and functional fitness for interacting with host nationals. Consistent with Kim’s ( 2001 ) theory, such communication may be a source of instrumental and emotional support for students when locals are not interested in contacts with them (Brown, 2009 ). Nonetheless, Pedersen et al. ( 2011 ) found that social interactions with co-nationals may cause psychological adjustment problems (e.g., homesickness), contradicting the acculturation theory (Ward and Kennedy, 1994 ), or increase their uncertainty (Rui and Wang, 2015 ), supporting the AUM theory.

Avenues for future research

We addressed research question 5 regarding future research directions through a content analysis of the 31 most impactful articles in the field. Importantly, all 20 trending articles listed in Table ​ Table1 1 were contained in the set of 31 articles. This outcome confirms the relevance of the results of the content analysis. We used these results as the basis for formulating the research questions we believe should be addressed within each of the two research streams. These questions are listed in Table ​ Table3 3 .

Future research questions

Research has focused primarily on the experience of Asian students in Anglophone countries (16 out of 31 most impactful articles), with Chinese students’ integration being the motor theme. This is not surprising given that Asian students account for 58% of all international students worldwide (OECD, 2021b ). In addition, Anglophone countries have been the top host destinations for the last two decades. The USA, the UK, and Australia hosted 49% of international students in 2000, while the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia hosted 47% of international students in 2020 (Project Atlas, 2020 ). This fact raises the question of the generalizability of the research results across cultural contexts, especially given the previously identified cultural variation in student adaptation (Fritz et al., 2008 ). Thus, it is important to study the experiences of students in underexplored non-Anglophone host destinations that are currently gaining in popularity, such as China, hosting 9% of international students worldwide in 2019, France, Japan, or Spain (Project Atlas, 2020 ). Furthermore, future research in various non-Anglophone countries could precisely define the role of English as a lingua franca vs. host-language proficiency in international students’ experience.

The inconsistent results concerning the effects of communication with co-nationals on student adaptation (e.g., Pedersen et al., 2011 ; Pitts, 2009 ) indicate that more contextualized research is needed to determine if such communication is a product of or a precursor to adaptation difficulties (Pedersen et al., 2011 ). Given the lack of confirmation of the acculturation theory (Ward and Kennedy, 1994 ) or the communication and cross-cultural adaptation theory (Kim, 2001 ) in this regard, future research could cross-check the formation of students’ social networks with their adaptation trajectories, potentially using other theories such as social network theory to explain the contradictory results of empirical research.

Zhang and Goodson ( 2011 ) showed that social connectedness and social interaction with host nationals predict both psychological and sociocultural adaptation. In contrast, the sojourner adjustment framework (Ward and Kennedy, 1999 ) considered their impact on sociocultural adaptation only. Thus, future research should conceptualize the interrelationships among social interactions in the host country and various adaptation domains (psychological, sociocultural, and academic) more precisely.

Some studies (Brown, 2009 ; Gallagher, 2013 ; Rui and Wang, 2015 ) confirm all of the major adaptation theories in that host-language proficiency increases cultural knowledge and the acquisition of social skills, reduces uncertainty and facilitates intercultural communication. Nevertheless, the impact of language on sociocultural adaptation appears to be a complex issue. Our content analysis indicated that sociocultural adaptation may be impacted by academic adaptation (Yu, 2013 ) or does not occur when students do not engage in meaningful interactions with host nationals (Ortaçtepe, 2013 ). To better capture the positive sociocultural adaptation outcomes, researchers should take into account students’ communication motivations, together with other types of adaptation that may determine sociocultural adaptation.

Next, in view of some research suggesting the mediating role of second-language proficiency (Yang et al., 2006 ), contacts with host nationals (Swami et al., 2010 ), and students’ global competence (Meng et al., 2018 ) in their adaptation, future research should consider other non-language-related factors such as demographic, sociocultural, and personality characteristics in student adaptation models.

Finally, the conceptual map of the field established the experiences of medical students and the learning environment as an emerging research agenda. We expect that future research will focus on the experience of other types of students such as management or tourism students who combine studies with gaining professional experience in their fields. In terms of the learning environment and given the development and growing importance of online learning as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, future research should explore the effects of remote communication, both synchronous and asynchronous, in online learning on students’ adaptation and well-being.

This article offers an objective approach to reviewing the current state of the literature on language and communication in student adaptation by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 313 articles and a content analysis of 31 articles identified as the driving force in the field. Only articles in English were included due to the authors’ inability to read the identified articles in Russian, Spanish, or Chinese. Future research could extend the data search to other languages.

This review found support for the effects of language of communication on student adaptation, confirming major adaptation theories. Nevertheless, it also identified inconsistent results concerning communication with co-nationals and the complex effects of communication with host nationals. Thus, we suggested that future research better captures the adaptation outcomes by conducting contextualized research in various cultural contexts, tracking the formation of students’ social networks, and precisely conceptualizing interrelations among social interactions in the host country and different adaptation domains. Researchers should also consider students’ communication motivations and the mediating role of non-language-related factors in student adaptation models.

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Author contribution

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Michał Wilczewski had the idea for the article, performed the literature search and data analysis, and drafted the manuscript. Ilan Alon critically revised the work, suggested developments and revisions, and edited the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

This research is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange grant “Exploring international students’ experiences across European and non-European contexts” [grant number PPN/BEK/2019/1/00448/U/00001] to Michał Wilczewski.

Declarations

The authors declare no competing interests.

Publisher's note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Michał Wilczewski, Email: [email protected] .

Ilan Alon, Email: [email protected] .

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• MyU : For Students, Faculty, and Staff

Professor Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali at ECE Spring 2024 Colloquium

Blockchains, decentralized learning, and game of coding.

The decentralization movement, which emerged in 2008 with the success of Bitcoin, aims to revolutionize digital platforms by making them transparent and open to the public for coordination, contribution, and verification. This movement is currently reshaping the AI landscape, with a focus on designing decentralized machine learning (DeML) platforms. However, blockchains, as decentralized trust engines, face limitations in computational power, which hinder this transformation.

In this talk, we will first review blockchain consensus, its potential to enable distributed computing platforms, and its inherent limitations. We will then discuss why existing solutions based on verifiable computation outsourcing are ineffective for massive and approximate ML computations. As an alternative, we will introduce the game of coding, which leverages the power of redundant (coded) computing to effectively detect and correct errors in outsourced tasks. The game of coding utilizes the inherent rationality of potential adversaries to expand the applicability of coding theory in a trust-minimized setting, where external nodes are overwhelmingly dishonest.

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