Transnational Habitus as a Configuration of Dispositions: Chinese International Students Navigating Online Information

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of transnationalism on Chinese international graduate students’ literacy practices in online information seeking. Using phenomenological interviewing, weekly diaries, and focus group data, the study found that these students actively engage in recursive, dynamic, and flexible online information-seeking literacy practices that transcend linguistic, digital, and unconventional cultural boundaries due to their multilingual capacity and unique social positioning in the online information landscape. This study reveals that these students’ transnational habitus in online information seeking manifests as a configuration of dispositions rather than one fixed transnational habitus. These findings underscore the importance of understanding multilingual international students’ online information-seeking experiences, literacies, and challenges to inform engaging, transnationally inclusive, and culturally relevant information literacy curricula and instruction in U.S. higher education institutions.