This thesis investigates sociolinguistic variation among highly fluent Slovak-English bilingual women and also long-term immigrants residing in Edinburgh, Scotland. The present study adds to existing literature on urban migratory experiences (Block, 2008; Forsberg, Lundell and Bartning, 2015; Howley, 2015), comparing cross-cultural variation of immigrants' speech with their local peers (Drummond, 2010, 2012; Meyerhoff et al., 2009), by exploring linguistic and social constraints on language attitudes and accent acquisition among bilingual Slovak immigrants. Sociolinguistic interview data were obtained from 32 women, ages 22-46: 20 Slovak immigrants, 8 Edinburgh Scottish participants, and 6 bilingual Slovak teachers of English in Slovakia. By considering linguistic and social factors that influence Slovak immigrants' variation, in this thesis I ask not just whether and to what extent do local language communities shape immigrants' identity, but also how their identity affects their language attitudes and pronunciation. The thesis pays particular attention to how implicit and explicit language attitudes combine to establish what Block (2008) called a "multidimensional" identity in immigrants. Further investigation establishes a link between identity and production (Redinger and Llamas, 2014; Podesva et al., 2015) by drawing on the variationist sociolinguistic methodologies set out by Labov (1966, 2001, 2006). Implicit language attitudes were collected via a Verbal Guise Task (VGT), during which participants evaluated speakers of foreign and native English accents (Campbell- Kibler, 2006; McKenzie, 2015; McKenzie and Carrie, 2018). Explicit attitudes were collected via a questionnaire designed to elicit attitudes in a casual setting (Dörnyei and Csizér, 2012). The combination of methodologies revealed that immigrant participants in the study held complex attitudes and motivations in relation to their host country. The results for language attitudes suggested that long-term Slovak immigrants experienced shifts to their identity while residing in Scotland, with most adopting a transnational identity that made them amenable to local language communities while maintaining connections with their home country. Their identity represented a degree of integration with Scottish communities, but transnational immigrants often felt separate from both home and host countries as a result. The present study also explores connection between identity and production which is now well recognised (Kobiałka, 2016; Regan, 2016; Regan and Ni Chasaide, 2010; Bucholtz, 2011). Immigrant participants' pronunciations of FACE and GOAT vowel lexical sets (Wells, 1982) were evaluated in comparison to two language groups that represented different standards of pronunciation: native Scottish participants in Edinburgh, with more monophthongal pronunciations (Schützler, 2015); and English-Slovak bilinguals residing in Trnava, Slovakia, whose vowel productions were highly diphthongal and similar to Received Pronunciation (RP) constructions. Comparative study of pronunciations revealed that the immigrants' FACE and GOAT realisations were relatively more monophthongal than the non-immigrant Slovak group, yet more diphthongal than the native Scottish group - effectively making immigrant Slovaks' mean pronunciations separate and distinct from both native standard varieties. However, the immigrant's pronunciations varied widely, and data modelling revealed associations between key social factors and pronunciation. Settings of high formality, strong European and Slovak identities, and intentions to return to Slovakia were associated with relatively more diphthongal pronunciations. Decreased formality, strong Scottish identities, and lack of formal education before immigration were associated with relatively more monophthongal pronunciations. Key findings in the study reinforce observations of multi-cultural identities in longterm Slovak immigrants. Drawing on work that explores variation in language attitudes (Clark and Schleef, 2010) and production in migratory settings (Meyerhoff and Schleef, 2014), I argue that there is a tendency for immigrants to shape their multi-cultural identities in response to linguistic and social contexts. However, internal contexts such as self-definition were equally important in shaping identities, which in turn affected language attitudes and pronunciation.

The presence of both narcissism and social capital in the digital social networking site Facebook is altering the dynamic of relationship development. Therefore, the central research question directing this study is as follows: What role do narcissistic personality traits play in bridging social capital on Facebook? From this, two sub-questions are raised: 1) What are the motives for users to express narcissistic traits through Facebook? 2) How is narcissistic-motivated activity influencing social capital development through Facebook? Guiding this thesis are concepts of social tie relationships (as they apply to narcissism), and digital social networks. An exploratory study of in-depth interviews was utilized to conduct such research. A key objective in this thesis is understanding motive and purpose for generating social capital in an online environment. The findings from this study suggest Facebook is a facilitator for the expression of narcissistic traits. As a result, this is influencing the disconnected and questionable value of digital social capital.

Undersökningsområdet är äldre hemtjänsttagare som bor ensamma, där vi har studerat hur hemtjänsttagare blir påverkade av den så kallade upplevda ensamheten. Som teoretiska utgångspunkter används socialgerontologi och gerotranscendens då begreppen vi använder i studien återfinns i dessa båda teorier, samt att vi kopplar dessa till ett socialpedagogiskt perspektiv. Avsikten är att finna en brygga mellan de nämnda teoribildningarna.Syftet med studien är att synliggöra och analysera ensamhet som socialt fenomen för äldre hemtjänsttagare i relation till social identitet och olika sociala nätverksband. Den första frågeställningen som studien vill besvara är hur äldre upplever att vara hemtjänsttagare och den andra frågan är vilka sociala nätverksband som blir synliga och hur det påverkar hemtjänsttagarens känsla av ensamhet. Den slutliga frågan är hur hemtjänsttagarens känsla av ensamhet kan förstås genom social identitet. Studien har genomförts kvalitativt med fyra halvstrukturerade livsvärldsintervjuer. Studiens undersökningspersoner valdes utifrån kriterier såsom att de skulle bo själva och ha daglig hemtjänsthjälp. Ett andra kriterium var att de skulle kunna uttrycka sig muntligt. Utifrån studiens tre begrepp ensamhet, social identitet och sociala nätverksband görs en första analys av det empiriska materialet. I ett andra steg görs analys med hjälp av gerotranscendensens dimensioner och dess innebörder. Resultatet visar att de äldre uppskattar besöken de får av hemtjänstpersonalen samt att det påverkar deras upplevda känsla av ensamhet. Resultatet visar också på ett samband mellan ensamhet, social identitet och social nätverksband. Analysen av empirin utifrån gerotranscendensen visar på en positivt upplevd ensamhet och inte enbart negativ ensamhet. / The field of study is elderly home care recipient who live alone, where a study was made in how these recipients are influenced by the so-called perceived loneliness. The theoretical frameworks used in this study are social gerontology and gerotranscendence since the terminology used in the study occur in both theories, as well as we connect the theories to a social pedagogical perspective. The intention is to find a bridge between the mentioned theories. The aim of the study is to reveal and analyze loneliness as a social phenomenon for elderly recipient of home care in relation to social identity and various social ties. The first issue which the study tries to answer is how the elderly perceive to be home care recipient and a second issue is which social ties become visible and how does that affect the home care recipient´s feeling of loneliness. The final issue is how the home care recipient´s feeling of loneliness can be understood by social identity. The study has been done qualitatively with four semi-structured life-world interviews. The examined persons in the study were chosen by the criterion of that the persons should live alone and have daily home care. A second criterion was that they should be able to express themselves verbally. By the three terminologies of the study such as loneliness, social identity and social ties, an initial analysis is made of the empirical data. Furthermore, a second analysis is made with the gerotranscendence´s dimensions and its signification. The result shows that the elderly appreciate their visits by the home care staff and that it affects their perceived feeling of loneliness. The result also shows a relation between loneliness, social identity and social ties. The analysis of the empirical data by the gerotranscendence shows a positive perceived loneliness and not only negative loneliness.

Network approach is more appropriate measure to describe the early internationalization of born global firms. The focus of our research is to investigate the origin, structure and role of social networks in the early internationalization of born global firms. We intend to investigate the structure of networks which is considered pre-requisite to study the other dimensions of network ties. Many researchers directly jump to study the role networks play without paying any attention from where these ties originate. Furthermore, much of the literature has connected the born global firms with high technology sector however, there are many examples of born global firms in traditional sectors. Similarly, very little is known about how various national context influence the internationalization process of firms. Therefore, we also intend to investigate network ties in the context of different industrial sectors and different level of country's institutional development by comparing born global firms from France and Pakistan.Our results reveal that these small born global firms use their networks to overcome the constraints to rapid internationalization which has been supported by previous empirical findings. The results also reveal that origin of ties is in both business-social or non-business social settings. Both weak and strong ties are found to have positive impact on the early internationalization; however composition of ties is different in low-tech and high-tech firms. We also argue that instead of country's level of institutional development, composition of ties is moderated by the industrial sector in which firm is operating.

During the last years, we have observed a progressive and continuous expansion of human-centered mobile wireless networks. The advent of these networks has encouraged the researchers to think about new solutions in order to ensure efficient evaluation and design of communication protocols. In fact, these networks are faced to several constraints as the lack of infrastructure, the dynamic topology, the limited resources and the deficient quality of service and security. We have been interested in the dynamicity of the network and in particular in human mobility. The human mobility has been widely studied in order to extract its intrinsic properties and to harness them to propose more accurate approaches. Among the prominent properties depicted in the literature, we have been specially attracted by the impact of the social interactions on the human mobility and consequently on the structure of the network. To grasp structural information of such networks, many metrics and techniques have been borrowed from the Social Network Analysis (SNA). The SNA can be seen as another network measurement task which extracts structural information of the network and provides useful feedback for communication protocols. In this context, the SNA has been extensively used to perform link prediction in social networks relying on their structural properties. Motivated by the importance of social ties in human-centered mobile wireless networks and by the possibilities that are brought by SNA to perform link prediction, we are interested by designing the first link prediction framework adapted for mobile wireless networks as Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTN). Our proposal tracks the evolution of the network through a third-order tensor over T periods and computes the sociometric Katz measure for each pair of nodes to quantify the strength of the social ties between the network entities. Such quantification gives insights about the links that are expected to occur in the period T+1 and the new links that are created in the future without being observed during the tracking time. To attest the efficiency of our framework, we apply our link prediction technique on three real traces and we compare its performance to the ones of other well-known link prediction approaches. The results prove that our method reaches the highest level of accuracy and outperforms the other techniques. One of the major contributions behind our proposal highlights that the link prediction in such networks can be made in a distributed way. In other words, the nodes can predict their future links relying on the local information (one-hop and two-hop neighbors) instead of a full knowledge about the topology of the network. Furthermore, we are keen to improve the link prediction performance of our tensor-based framework. To quantify the social closeness between the users, we take into consideration two aspects of the relationships: the recentness of the interactions and their frequency. From this perspective, we wonder if we can consider a third criterion to improve the link prediction precision. Asserting the heuristic that stipulates that persistent links are highly predictable, we take into account the stability of the relationships (link and proximity stabilities). To measure it, we opt for the entropy estimation of a time series proposed in the Lempel-Ziv data compression algorithm. As we think that our framework measurements and the stability estimations complement each other, we combine them in order to provide new link prediction metrics. The simulation results emphasize the pertinence of our intuition. Providing a tensor-based link prediction framework and proposing relative enhancements tied to stability considerations represent the main contributions of this thesis. Along the thesis, our concern was also focused on mechanisms and metrics that contribute towards improving communication protocols in these mobile networks [...]

Disertantė: Rasa Savičiūtė Mokslinis vadovas: Prof. Habil. Dr. Algirdas Juozulynas (Vilniaus universitetas, biomedicinos mokslai, visuomenės sveikata – 09 B) Lietuvoje tik labai neseniai buvo pradėta analizuoti sveikatos santykis su sociologija, socialiniais santykiais ir pan. Pastaruoju metu visuomenės sveikatos tyrimai orientuojasi į tokias inovatyvias sritis kaip sveikatos kokybė, sveikatos paslaugų efektyvumas, veiklos solidarumas, integralumas, sveikatos politikos elementų diegimas visose socialinės ir ekonominės veiklos srityse. Visuomenės senėjimas, socialiniai, ekonominiai pokyčiai, rinkos elementų skverbimasis į sveikatos paslaugų sferą keičia visuomenės sveikatos būklės ir integralios aplinkos sąveikos pobūdį. Šios aplinkybės keičia ir sveikatos politikos veiksmingumo prielaidas. Jos turi remtis mokslinių tyrimų informacija. Deja, Lietuvoje nėra daug atlikta panašios krypties mokslinių tyrimų. Šiuo tyrimu mes siekiame sistematiškai ištirti ir įvertinti svarbiausių sveikatos ir socialinių veiksnių bei jų tarpusavio sąveikų poveikio visuomenės sveikatos būklei skirtumus ir tuo pagrindu besiformuojančias sveikatos socialines struktūras. Tyrimo metu analizuota subjektyviai vertinama sveikatos būklė, sergamumas, vyraujančios sveikatos problemos ir psichikos sveikatos būklės. Visa tai buvo nagrinėta skirtingose socialinių veiksnių, bei jų integralios tarpusavio sąveikos įtakos srityse. / Author: Rasa Savičiūtė Scientific supervisors: Prof. habil. dr. Algirdas Juozulynas (Vilnius University, biomedical sciences, public health – 09B) In fact, the relationship of health and sociology, social relations, etc., has been started to be analyzed recently in Lithuania. Recently, public health research is focused on innovative fields as health quality, efficiency of health services, solidarity and integrity of activity, introduction of health policy elements in all fields of social and economic activity. Aging society, social, economic changes, penetration of market elements in the sphere of health services change the nature of interaction between public health condition and integral environment that influences it. These circumstances also alter the assumptions of health policy effectiveness. The latter must be based on information of scientific research. Unfortunately, there has been carried out small number of research of similar direction in Lithuania. Hereby, we seek to explore systematically and assess the differences of the main health and social factors, and the impact of their interactions on public health condition and the emerging social structures of health. The research analyzed the subjectively assessed health condition, morbidity, prevailing health problems and mental health conditions. These aspects were examined in different fields of influence of social factors as well as in their integral interaction.

In fact, the relationship of health and sociology, social relations, etc., has been started to be analyzed recently in Lithuania. Recently, public health research is focused on innovative fields as health quality, efficiency of health services, solidarity and integrity of activity, introduction of health policy elements in all fields of social and economic activity. Aging society, social, economic changes, penetration of market elements in the sphere of health services change the nature of interaction between public health condition and integral environment that influences it. These circumstances also alter the assumptions of health policy effectiveness. The latter must be based on information of scientific research. Unfortunately, there has been carried out small number of research of similar direction in Lithuania. Hereby, we seek to explore systematically and assess the differences of the main health and social factors, and the impact of their interactions on public health condition and the emerging social structures of health. The research analyzed the subjectively assessed health condition, morbidity, prevailing health problems and mental health conditions. These aspects were examined in different fields of influence of social factors as well as in their integral interaction. / Lietuvoje tik labai neseniai buvo pradėta analizuoti sveikatos santykis su sociologija, socialiniais santykiais ir pan. Pastaruoju metu visuomenės sveikatos tyrimai orientuojasi į tokias inovatyvias sritis kaip sveikatos kokybė, sveikatos paslaugų efektyvumas, veiklos solidarumas, integralumas, sveikatos politikos elementų diegimas visose socialinės ir ekonominės veiklos srityse. Visuomenės senėjimas, socialiniai, ekonominiai pokyčiai, rinkos elementų skverbimasis į sveikatos paslaugų sferą keičia visuomenės sveikatos būklės ir integralios aplinkos sąveikos pobūdį. Šios aplinkybės keičia ir sveikatos politikos veiksmingumo prielaidas. Jos turi remtis mokslinių tyrimų informacija. Deja, Lietuvoje nėra daug atlikta panašios krypties mokslinių tyrimų. Šiuo tyrimu mes siekiame sistematiškai ištirti ir įvertinti svarbiausių sveikatos ir socialinių veiksnių bei jų tarpusavio sąveikų poveikio visuomenės sveikatos būklei skirtumus ir tuo pagrindu besiformuojančias sveikatos socialines struktūras. Tyrimo metu analizuota subjektyviai vertinama sveikatos būklė, sergamumas, vyraujančios sveikatos problemos ir psichikos sveikatos būklės. Visa tai buvo nagrinėta skirtingose socialinių veiksnių, bei jų integralios tarpusavio sąveikos įtakos srityse.

A presente dissertação de mestrado é um estudo a respeito das práticas que engendram políticas públicas de desenvolvimento no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. A partir da investigação de um movimento criado pelos empresários, tratase de desvendar a complexa trama que vincula as principais lideranças empresariais entre si, e, essas a autoridades governamentais. Examina-se o caminho percorrido desde a construção, elaboração de demandas, até o encaminhamento ao setor público das políticas do setor. Objetiva-se, por fim, analisar as concepções específicas de desenvolvimento que estão associadas ao processo de construção das referidas políticas. / The present master thesis is a study of the practices which engender public development policies in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. Through the investigation of a movement formed by entrepreneurs, this work tries to unravel a complex business affair which ties the main business leadership among them and those governmental authorities. This work also examines the procedure from the construction and elaboration of demands, to the guiding to the public sector, as well as the policies of this sector. We aim to analyze the specific conceptions of development which are associated to the process of construction of the referred policies.

A presente dissertação de mestrado é um estudo a respeito das práticas que engendram políticas públicas de desenvolvimento no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. A partir da investigação de um movimento criado pelos empresários, tratase de desvendar a complexa trama que vincula as principais lideranças empresariais entre si, e, essas a autoridades governamentais. Examina-se o caminho percorrido desde a construção, elaboração de demandas, até o encaminhamento ao setor público das políticas do setor. Objetiva-se, por fim, analisar as concepções específicas de desenvolvimento que estão associadas ao processo de construção das referidas políticas. / The present master thesis is a study of the practices which engender public development policies in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. Through the investigation of a movement formed by entrepreneurs, this work tries to unravel a complex business affair which ties the main business leadership among them and those governmental authorities. This work also examines the procedure from the construction and elaboration of demands, to the guiding to the public sector, as well as the policies of this sector. We aim to analyze the specific conceptions of development which are associated to the process of construction of the referred policies.

隨著經濟的快速成長，產生了各種社會問題，而為了解決這些社會問題，許多社會企業隨之出現，這些企業希望在改善社會問題的同時，能透過盈利的方式，使組織永續經營，而本研究欲探討社會企業如何取得資源，換言之，哪些因素會影響資源擁有者提供資源的意願。 本研究參考過去的文獻資料，整理出三項會影響社會企業獲取資源難易度的因子，分別為「社交連結」、「品質信號」與「說故事」，並透過個案研究的方式，透過深度訪談及次級資料的蒐集，探討各個因子是否對社會企業取得資源有所影響。研究結果顯示，在三項因子中，社會企業最常使用說故事的方法來獲取資源，最少透用釋放釋放品質信號，然而，若社會企業有一個很強的品質信號，便會被大量的使用。最後，社會企業若有好的故事，且主動聯絡，透過多樣化的媒體管道，也能更有效的吸引資源擁有者的注意，增加獲得資源機會。 / With the rapid development of economy, a variety of social problems have arisen. As a result, many social enterprises have emerged in order to solve these social problems. These enterprises attempt to help solve social problems and meanwhile, they want to make the enterprise sustainable by making profit. This study wants to explore how social enterprises acquire resources. In other words, this study examines the factors that will affect the willingness of resource owners to provide resources. Referring to past literature about how social enterprises acquire resources, this study categorizes them into three factors that may affect the accessibility of resources for social enterprises, which are “social ties”, “quality signals” and “storytelling.” This study uses the method of case study. Through in-depth interviews and secondary information, we examine how each factor may affect social enterprises acquiring resources. Results show that among the three factors, storytelling is being used the most often to obtain resources. On the other hand, quality signals are used the least often. However, if a social enterprise has a very strong quality signal, it will be widely used. Finally, if a social enterprise has a good story and takes initiative to contact media, it can attract more media attention. Through various media channels, more resource owners will have the chance to know this social enterprise; therefore, the chance of acquiring resources may increase.