Intercultural communication for young sojourners: Using social media campaign to reduce stereotyping in intercultural encounters

Based on imagined contact theory, we designed and conducted a social media campaign to improve the relationship between PR China (PRC) sojourners and the host nationals, Singaporeans. In the end, we examined how the interactions with our campaign account on the social networking site affect PRC sojourners’ perceived discrimination and finally their stereotyping toward Singaporeans. The results showed that for our campaign audiences, imagined contact introduced by interactions on social media significantly reduces their perceived discrimination and stereotyping. Face-to-face encounters with host nationals, however, did not significantly affect perceived discrimination. In sum, our findings indicated that a well-designed and supervised social media campaign could be a powerful tool in reducing young sojourners’ bias and stereotyping towards the host society.