Introduction

This book is about the vigorous preparation process of ‘impression management’ among the current, former, and prospective Korean graduate students of American universities through their online communications at the ‘back stage’ (the Vivid Journal social network) with the aim of helping its initial posters meet their academic concerns and build better working relationships with their American university academic advisors in the future at the ‘front stage’—i.e., the real-world situations. To that end, some key concepts, such as communicative agents, communicative guiders, and mediated accounts are introduced. More importantly, from the perspective of communicative guiders, the Vivid Journal social network is identified as the community of social support for their communicative agents seeking comments, mostly information. Their responses further show the nexus between the basic forms of information (the sharing of experiences, content analysis, and advice) and its contents (institutional, academic, cultural, and social matters).