This paper was written by Professor Yang, Tian from School of Overseas Education, Sichuan University, which was published inChinese Journal of Journalism & Communication (Volume 43, No.6, 2021).

The communication behavior of sojourners presents the complex characteristics of dynamicity and expediency in the intercultural context, yet existing studies tend to generalize or categorize the communication behavior of sojourners. Based on the survey data of 528 Chinese sojourners’ social media use in the United States, this study shows that the driving force of relationship motivation on self-presentation strategies presents the following characteristics: First, on Chinese social media platform, motivation of maintaining domestic relationships mainly drives proactive presentation strategy; on American social media platform, motivation of developing relationships with Americans drives defensive presentation strategy. Second, the motivation of developing relationships with Chinese Americans only drives defensive presentation strategy on Chinese social media platform, while it mainly drives proactive presentation strategy on American social media platform. The above two characteristics can be conceptualized as “intercultural retrogressive effect”. The discovery of this effect reveals the linkage mechanism between relationship motivation and self-presentation strategy of social communication and interpersonal relationships in intercultural context, which can expand interpretation path of identity negotiation theory, as well as clearly defne and subdivide typical identity negotiation strategies.

In view of its original contribution in the field of new media research, the paper was awarded China "Best Paper" of New Media Communication Annual Conference, 2020, and the "OutstandingAcademicAward " of the 4th Youth New Media Academic Research. In general, this paper made a great theoretical contribution with great practical value and has a certain academic influence in the field of new media research.