<p>Digital platformization and cross-cultural mobility have changed how mobile individuals encounter, navigate, and participate in urban life. Focusing on international students in Beijing, this study examines how urban communication is experienced through daily media practices under these conditions. Drawing on a qualitative design and reflexive thematic analysis of one focus group and in-depth interviews, the study offers a situated account of urban communication as an action-oriented process. The analysis shows that urban entry depends on access to operational knowledge, conceptualized here as small information, which translates unfamiliar urban conditions into executable scripts and reduces uncertainty in daily practice. Such information becomes unevenly visible within platform recommendation environments, as different starting points, commercial priorities, and location-based technical conditions shape pathways of urban perception. These perceptions are further recalibrated through the interplay between digital pre-experience and embodied practice, leading to differentiated participation states. Therefore, the study reconsiders urban communication as a process shaped by the practical and platform-mediated conditions that enable participation.</p>