The Potential of Social Media to Enhance Cultural Adaptation: A Study on Iranian Student in the Finnish Context

This paper aims to find out the adequacy of social media as a trendy technology application to enhance cultural adaptation among Iranian tertiary-level students in Finland. For this purpose, integrative communication theory adapted as the research framework to study the effect of environment and investigate the approach of social and individuals’ communication in the process of cultural adaptation. Accordingly, 23 students of the different universities in Finland through a snowball sampling method were interviewed and their opinion, attitudes, feeling and experienced were recorded and thematically analyzed. The results of the study indicated the potential of social media for individual communication among the participants. Iranian students are easily communicating with their family and friends inside and outside of Finland. It assists to reduce the intercultural stress of the participants. Further, social media opens the door for students (or immigrants) to communicate with their compatriots in Finland when they need some information or guidance. However, some participants of this study do not believe the adequacy of the current function of social media for enhancing their cultural adaptation. While Friendship with Finnish is a challenge for Iranian students, social media could not provide a route to facilitate communication between Iranians and Finnish society. Whereas social media is potential to facilitate exchanging the information for a minor community in a host country and providing acting as a bridge to communicate immigrant with local people, it is substantial to find the right approach that social media could enhance cultural adaptation through these functions.