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

Many uses and gratifications scholars have called for more research on medi a use within various cultural contexts as a means of extending the understa nding of motivations for media use and the resulting patterns of exposure. This study of 99 Asian Indian graduate students at a US university differen tiates the mass media that these predominantly young, urban males used in I ndia (prior to coming to the US) and in the US (after their arrival in the US), Via principal components analysis, the study also identifies eight mot ives for Indian students' use of American television, including the motives of acculturation and reflection on values. The data show that need for acc ulturation is strongly correlated with the motives of acculturation and sur veillance and moderately correlated with reflection on values and learning. Overall, motives for American television viewing shared 45% of their varia nce with need for acculturation, indicating the importance of the new cultu re's media in the acculturation process of sojourners. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sc ience Ltd. All rights reserved.