How Reddit communities act as a tool for western expats to remain connected to their culture and cope with culture shock while living in countries with foreign languages and ideals.

A Communities and Social Media Conference Paper

Author
Jayson Bradley Pye

Completed for Curtin University courseNET204 Conference Paper
NET204 Social Media, Communities and Networks

Introduction:

Community is changing, but is alive and well on the Internet. Online media and social networks help people connect with each other and support the community. (Hampton & Wellman, 2018).
This comment has been critiqued heavily, in that it may be alive but it is also being eroded, and people may be connecting online but it does not bring with it the same essence as being together in person. Certain publications (Pisa, 2022) have claimed that this is leading to the decline of relationships and physical contact between individuals which could have lasting consequences for the relevant party’s social abilities. This has some merit; (Dotson, 2017) claims that a socially networked society is treated as a blessing when it potentially should not be, and that anyone who has enjoyed a summer day on the front porch with friends or neighbors, would definitely not compare that to social media.However, if you take into account that these people may not be in a position to retain their community interaction due to certain circumstances. Those living as expatriates lack the ability to consistently connect with those with familiar languages and ideals, which can lead to the phenomenon known as culture shock. Before the emergence of online social platforms, there were limited ways to stay connected to your culture and to find assistance in these circumstances. In recent times online communities have formed and are thriving on Reddit. This paper will discuss social media communities on Reddit, and show why they can be an extremely useful tool in staying connected to your home culture, and battling culture shock.

What is culture shock?
Oberg (1960) was one of the first to look into the phenomenon in depth and has categorized it as “precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse”. Culture shock is in essence, how things completely different to what you are used to socially take place and cause extreme anxiety. Of course there is the language used when in a foreign country; but what about smaller things? Things such as the way we greet and shake hands, how to accept gifts, when to take a certain statement seriously or how to know if it is in jest. These are all things we learn growing up in our own respective cultures, but these are especially exacerbated when we go from the western world to eastern countries like Russia or Japan.

Oberg (1960) explains that culture shock that can produce numerous reactions such as confusion, anxiety, and even depression. Which comes on the back of the person’s expectations not coinciding with reality. This kind of reaction can permeate into all aspects of a person’s life eroding their family ties and professional career. Long ago before the invention of social media the only conclusion that seemed effective was to “do in Rome as the Romans do” (Oberg, 1960), or put differently try to integrate, leaving behind all of your previous culture’s life even if you plan to return some day. This method was truly all that we were able to do, in 2023 however we have different online communities that expatriates can engage with in order to soften the blow of culture shock. Social media is one tool that we can use to support connection of diverse people, traditions, opinions and places with each other across the world without being restricted by limitations like time and distance.

What is Reddit?
Reddit is one of the most prominent social platforms with 52 million daily active users (Proferes et al., 2021) It contains communities called “subreddits” that any user can create, allowing for easy access to forming a community where users can appear anonymous if they wish, this is occasionally performed as a way of asking for help with a serious problem while avoiding being identified by relevant parties.Users can sign up to communities which may or may not have their own ruleset in place to prevent things such as harmful behavior or advertisement.

Examples of reddit communities and how they help

r/Aussieexpats
AussieExpats (R/aussieexpats. reddit.) is a reddit community helping members stay close to their Australian roots while living as expats. This community describes itself as catering to Australian citizens living abroad, or citizens of two nations including Australia., Aussieexpats focuses more on cultural issues and news within Australia, allowing users to feel some connection to their home country whilst living abroad. Communities such as this can grow organically, originally it starts with a single person creating a reddit page and like minded members join and it grows. During the growth process things such as rules and additional moderators are added to help keep things moving forward in the best interests of the community.

r/Chinalife
Chinalife (R/chinalife. reddit.) is a community built for expats living in China to ask questions and find advice about shopping, paying bills, choosing services, housing, and most importantly adjusting to a new lifestyle. This page helps to maintain it’s community focus by having the forum moderated by fellow users in the community itself, and they take criticism and advice on the page once a month to see what users are interested in seeing regularly, or to see if users wish to create or edit rules.

r/Japanlife
Japanlife (R/japanlife. reddit.) is a reddit community that boasts its community meaning as “Anything relevant to living or working in Japan such as lifestyle, food, style, environment, education, technology, housing, work, immigration, sport etc.”
Long ago if you were an expat living in Japan you would have to struggle through learning Japanese before you could realistically participate in deep conversations or community interaction. The U.S. Department of State (2022) claims as a “super-hard” language which will take 48000 hours or 88 weeks of study to achieve relative fluency in. It seems absurd for someone moving to Japan to spend 1.5 years studying a language before they can start to break the walls of culture shock. Japanlife has over 455000 subscribers that discuss various topics ranging from assistance in handling matters in Japan such as getting a license or sorting trash all the way to conversations reminiscing over cultural days in their home countries such as Australia Day. One particular case of depression (R/japanlife – I’m in an unshakable state of depression. reddit.) has a user posting stating that they are “In an unshakable state of depression” which is quickly met with many helpful comments by fellow reddit users, ones which list very in depth methods for help and also members offering to reach out to guide them through clinic processes if necessary, this user continues to post later in the thread that he is doing well and was moved by all the support.

According to (Furnham, 2019) around 400 million people are migrants, which is nearly 4% of the world’s population which has resulted in the rapid expansion of culture shock soon becoming culture unrest. This also looks at potential remedies and interventions for culture shock, which include emphasizing inter-group similarities and identities, on this particular reddit community of Japanlife there are constantly requests for members or talks about things such as “is this normal in Japan”, sometimes culture shock can make a person believe that everything that is happening is due to cultural differences, but these posts tend to remedy these thoughts as they are more than often filled with friendly users explaining that the perspective they are using may not be realistic and that the cultural differences may not be as dramatic as they once thought. In these situations, there are several recorded occasions where user has been to the point of severe depression or even suicidal due to the struggles of living abroad and not being understood, but users coming from a similar background have been able to talk to these users in several instances to seek help and also providing the method to do so, as well as offering follow up help.

Additional social media cases

It’s true that in the global era, social media is becoming more popular in everyone’s daily life (Zaw, 2018), it can be used to socialize, share knowledge, meet people, go through new experiences, form bonds and cope with anxiety. A study (Zaw, 2018) has shown that international students in China apply social media for their intercultural adaptation also, studies show that social media created a community for international students to not only connect with their home, but also with people from their host country that speak their language. It can support people having strong relationships and adapting to the host country that they are currently living in.
It’s rare to find a situation where these differences can be observed in such a technological world, but studies have been conducted that have managed to cover this situation. Migrants in Jammu have had intermittent connectivity to the internet, leading to periods of time where noticeable changes have taken place.(Jamwell, Khanna, 2019) There were observable differences noted during times where the internet was snapped off due to security reasons, forcing migrants to enter challenging situations while trying to adapt to the local culture without any connection to home. A small sample size perhaps, but it’s clear at least in this case that without connection to local culture or family, people can experience some hardships. If there is an absence of the ability to access such things then Reddit can at least be used as a tool to have a positive impact in combating these negative effects.

Conclusion
Through the course of this paper we have looked at the terms, what culture shock is, as well as the kinds of communities existing on reddit. Through this it can be determined that these social media communities are having a positive effect on westerners living in foreign countries by offering support for depression, teaching language skills, developing strong relationships, and giving advice for everyday life in the country that they are residing in. These communities are also helping users stay connected to their home countries by having focused conversations on their cultural ideas, discussing news topics of their home countries, and celebrating holidays.
We have also determined that the aforementioned effects are valuable in that they assist in intercultural adaptation and which is essential in reducing the effects of culture shock. Social media communities are a very useful tool in this regard, however they are also exactly that, one tool to assist in battling these issues of lack of connection to home and culture shock.

References
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