With vast numbers of international students entering Australia, educational institutions and other international student service providers (including levels of government and community groups), often encounter challenges when disseminating relevant and timely information to these students. Often these challenges are compounded by many studies in the past that have focused on country of origin as a way to differentiate international students from each other. This research was born out of a need to find new, creative and effective ways of disseminating information to international students that go beyond traditional classifications. Therefore, this study argued that it is more useful to look at the sources of information from the perspective of different social network groupings than from the country of origin perspective. This is because international students are complex individuals with differing identities and information needs that are not solely located in the country/region they are born in. In order to uncover the different identities which students embrace, this research conducted focus groups to understand the social networks students belong to and to discern if there are patterns in the ways different social groups access information while in Australia. Students in the focus groups were drawn from postgraduate, undergraduate levels of study, as well as from TAFE and private colleges. The results indicate that classifying students according to the patterns of their social networks is more useful than grouping students to nationality when considering where students get information pre-arrival and during their time in Australia.