LIVING IN A TRANSNATIONAL ROOM: TRANSNATIONAL ONLINE COMMUNICATION BY UNACCOMPANIED KOREAN ADOLESCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

Seeking to understand the wide use of the Internet as a transnational communications technology, this qualitative study inquired into the Internet use of unaccompanied Korean adolescents. Grounded in the findings of the adolescents’ living contexts, this study set a basic question: How do the transnational online communication practices of unaccompanied adolescents shape and reflect their transnational lives? Spending a tremendous amount of time in their rooms at host homes due to their limited social relationships in the United States, they intensively consumed Korean media content via the Internet. They also made efforts to maintain interpersonal relationships with people in Korea by utilizing multiple online technologies. This study found that technological availability, cultural sensibility, and healthy peer community were important contexts of the adolescents’ transnational online communication.

Keywords

• transnational online communication
• unaccompanied adolescents
• internet use
• media consumption
• interpersonal communication