The Influence of Social Media Usage Frequency on the Intercultural Communicative Competence of Thai Undergraduate Chinese Majors

In the context of rapid digitalization, social media has become an important channel for Thai undergraduates to access diverse cultures and engage in intercultural communication. For students majoring in Chinese, social media not only provides opportunities for language input and cultural experience but may also influence the development of their intercultural communicative competence. This study targeted undergraduate students majoring in Chinese at a university in Thailand and collected data using a questionnaire survey, yielding 416 valid responses. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Through regression analysis, this study examined the predictive effect of social media use frequency on intercultural communicative competence. The findings reveal that the frequency of using social media has a significant positive impact on students' intercultural communication competence and can accurately predict their performance in cultural understanding, intercultural sensitivity, and communication strategies. From a digital learning perspective, this study reveals the relationship between social media use and intercultural communicative competence and provides empirical implications for Chinese language teaching and intercultural education in Thai universities.