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The movement of labor migrants in China has been considered as one of the largest labor movements in the peacetime world, with more than 140 million temporary migrants in China working away from their permanent residence more than six months per year (Taylor, 2017). According to the China National Bureau of Statistics (CNBS), there were 244 million temporary migrants in China in 2017, 66.4% of whom were males (CNBS, 2018). Chinese temporary migrants reported an average age of 31, mainly migrated from the central and western areas of China to the eastern areas, and mostly worked in the service and manufacturing industries (CNBS, 2018). Migration often involves a change of life status and a decreased level of life satisfaction (Knight & Gunatilaka, 2010), especially for temporary migrants, who were often found lacking social support due to long-distance separation with their previous social ties (Liu & Xu, 2017).
The emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as social media, was considered by some to engender an annihilation of space and a death of distance (Cairncross & Cairncross, 1997). The major social media platforms in China include QQ, Sina Weibo, and WeChat. Social media provide various functions, such as text messaging, voice messaging, and video messaging, to enable users to interact with friends over long distances (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). As a result, distance no longer confines communication between people.
Although several studies have explored the social media usage patterns among temporal migrants (e.g., Dekker et al., 2018), limited studies have examined whether social media usage can help temporary migrants to obtain social support. Moreover, limited studies have explored what motivates Chinese temporal migrants to use social media. To fill these gaps, the current study explored what motivates Chinese temporary migrants to use social media, and whether social media usage help temporary migrants to obtain social support.