Social curation is a new trend which has emerged following on the heels of the information glut created by user-generated content revolution. Rather than create new content, social curation allows users to categorise content created by others, and thereby creating and resharing their personal taxonomies of the Web. In this dissertation, we collect a large dataset from Pinterest, arguably the most popular image curation service, and seek to understand the trend on three levels: content, friends and crowds. We first take an empirical look at social curation by mining its content usage. Our data reveals that curation tends to focus on niche items that may not rank highly in popularity and search rankings. Yet, curated items exhibit their own skewed popularity, although most users, or curators, act for personal reasons. At the same time, it also shows that curators with consistent activity and diversity of interests show more social value in attracting followers. This drives us to explore the role of social networks on social curation. We find that social users are more active and are more likely to return soon in Pinterest, indicating a bonding effect enabled by social networks. Then we divide the social network into two subgraphs, according to whether they are created natively or copied from some other established social networks (e.g., Facebook) via a social bootstrapping method. It shows that, when users just join the service, copied network can promote more social interaction, as it initiates a stronger and denser social structure than native network. However, social networks are not critical for information seeking, as a non-trivial number of users’ content are curated from strangers with high interest matching. In fact, this trend also holds for social interaction: Users tend to wean from copied friends to interact more with interest-based native friends over a long-term view. Finally, we understand social curation as a distributed computation process, and examine the relationship between curators and crowds. We show that despite being categorised by individual actions, there is generally a global agreement in implicitly assigning content into a coarse-grained global taxonomy of categories, and furthermore, users tend to specialise in a handful of categories. By exploiting these characteristics, and augmenting with image-related features drawn from a state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural network, we develop a cascade of predictors that together automate a large fraction of curation actions with an end-to-end accuracy of 0.69 (Accuracy@5 of 0.75).

Releasing anonymized social network data for analysis has been a popular idea among data providers. Despite evidence to the contrary the belief that anonymization will solve the privacy problem in practice refuses to die. This dissertation contributes to the field of social graph de-anonymization by demonstrating that even automated models can be quite successful in breaching the privacy of such datasets. We propose novel machine-learning based techniques to learn the identities of nodes in social graphs, thereby automating manual, heuristic-based attacks. Our work extends the vast literature of social graph de-anonymization attacks by systematizing them. We present a random-forests based classifier which uses structural node features based on neighborhood degree distribution to predict their similarity. Using these simple and efficient features we design versatile and expressive learning models which can learn the de-anonymization task just from a few examples. Our evaluation establishes their efficacy in transforming de-anonymization to a learning problem. The learning is transferable in that the model can be trained to attack one graph when trained on another. Moving on, we demonstrate the versatility and greater applicability of the proposed model by using it to solve the long-standing problem of benchmarking social graph anonymization schemes. Our framework bridges a fundamental research gap by making cheap, quick and automated analysis of anonymization schemes possible, without even requiring their full description. The benchmark is based on comparison of structural information leakage vs. utility preservation. We study the trade-off of anonymity vs. utility for six popular anonymization schemes including those promising k-anonymity. Our analysis shows that none of the schemes are fit for the purpose. Finally, we present an end-to-end social graph de-anonymization attack which uses the proposed machine learning techniques to recover node mappings across intersecting graphs. Our attack enhances the state of art in graph de-anonymization by demonstrating better performance than all the other attacks including those that use seed knowledge. The attack is seedless and heuristic free, which demonstrates the superiority of machine learning techniques as compared to hand-selected parametric attacks.

In the sixty years following Allport's (1954) formulation of the contact hypothesis, very little research has tested the effect of negative intergroup contact. In recent years, several authors (e.g., Barlow et al., 2012; Pettigrew, 2008; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2013) have expressed concern over this positivity bias within the contact literature. In particular, Barlow et al. (2012) presented evidence that negative contact may have a larger effect on prejudice than positive contact. Barlow et al. argue that this contact valence asymmetry could mean that in socially diverse environments (which provide opportunities for both positive and negative contact), negative contact could counteract (or even reverse) the beneficial effects of positive contact. However, a number of studies have shown that rather than combining additively, positive and negative contact may in fact interact (i.e., the effects of negative contact may change depending upon the level of positive contact, and vice versa, e.g., Birtel & Crisp, 2012; Christ, Ullrich, & Wagner, 2008; Paolini et al., 2014). Unfortunately, the extent of evidence for these valenced contact interactions (and indeed for valenced contact effects in general) is severely limited, making it difficult to build any degree of theoretical (or methodological) consensus. The aims of this thesis are therefore twofold: first, to expand the body of evidence for the effects of negative intergroup contact; and second, to test the possible interaction between positive and negative contact as predictors of outgroup attitudes. With these aims in mind, this thesis presents four survey studies and three experiments testing the main effects and interactions of positive and negative contact across six different contact settings. In so doing, it reports strong evidence for the existence of valenced contact interactions. Based on the profiles of these interaction effects, the thesis ends by discussing possible causal explanations, and their implications for the field of valenced contact research.

The first chapter of this thesis begins with a systematic review focusing on the literature exploring the relationship between the use of social networking sites (SNS) by young people and their identity development. The chapter explores psychosocial theories of identity development before suggesting the possible role SNS may play in the formation of adolescent theory of self. A difficulty identified through the process was the lack of consensus between authors about the concept of identity. This chapter draws the different descriptions together, and suggests the authors are examining different aspects of the socialisation elements of identity, in line with Hermans and Hermans-Konopka (2010) conceptualisation. The synthesis of the literature presented a confusing, and at times contradictory, picture. The papers claimed a range of findings with some authors suggesting negative associations with identify experiments online and young people’s clarity of self-concept; others suggesting that SNS had a positive association with the socialisation features associated with identity formation; and some studies suggesting no relationship between the two variables. Overall, the synthesis of the literature indicated some relationship between identity and use of SNS, however the direction or causality of these relationships remains unclear. The second chapter discusses how the mixed findings from the systematic review were interpreted to form an empirical research project. It explores why the topic area was chosen, as well as methodological and ethical considerations. A key aim of the empirical research was for the voices of young people to be represented as honestly as possible, which raised further challenges and opportunities through the process. The final chapter presents the empirical research that was conducted. The overarching research question was to broadly examine how and why young people use SNS. Using a four phased methodological approach, young people’s views were gathered at each stage, informing and refining the research questions. An online questionnaire was then developed and circulated to three mainstream secondary schools and a specialist alternative provision within the local area. The results of the questionnaire indicate that, although not explicitly mentioned by young people, identity may be an aspect of why young people use SNS. 5 Analysis of the data also indicates that there are gender and age differences in what SNS young people are using, and which activities they engage in online. A novel finding was identified in that 53% of young people perceive interacting using SNS as different to ‘real-life’. A framework is proposed that builds on previous literature and incorporates the current study’s findings, to attempt to explain the motivators and mediators which result in young people’s chosen activities online. The findings are discussed in further detail, and their implications examined.

This research explores the joining process of newcomers in offline and online leisure pursuit groups. The notion of joining and becoming a member is a complex and under-explored area. People devote a significant amount of time and money to leisure and in modern life it is highly valued and desired. Yet it is acknowledged that leisure, as a distinctive aspect of society and social life, is often overlooked by researchers. More specifically, joining leisure groups can satisfy people’s need to belong and offer the conditions to pursuit their interests through social interaction, but understanding of this process is relatively under-developed. The research adopted a qualitative, predominantly inductive approach. For the first stage, an auto-ethnographic study was conducted on two offline and two online groups based in Yorkshire. For the final stage 18 face to face interviews were conducted with members of the same photographic groups. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis. The first stage revealed that groups and newcomers themselves use different, formal and informal approaches to becoming members. Members were found to have varied capital and skills. Information disseminated by groups about themselves was often inaccurate in regards to the entry requirements. The findings indicated that photographers tend to follow an equipment upgrade path that is linked with the joining process. Competitions in different forms were found to be a common and an integral part of photographic groups. They were viewed as a way to gain prestige and credibility. Casual competitions enabled novices to participate and feel part of the group. Compared to offline groups, joining online was found to be initially easy but it was harder to achieve a strong sense of belonging in the group. Overall Communities of Practice theory was found to provide a useful perspective for exploring joining. The final stage discovered that joining is linked to learning. Becoming a full participant in photographic communities implies the ability to become involved in core activities and to gain competency. Furthermore joining was found to be linked to the shaping of the identity. Learning and the ambition to learn shapes the identity. Through imagination, photographic members create images of the world and see connections through time which enable to accept or reject future identities. They can pursue future identities by learning. Differing forms of capital are converted in the different types of groups (offline, online, hybrid). Key moments of identification mark the transition between the joining and the establishment phase in the Photographic Membership Career Model. Members in online groups commonly have narrow identification, a form of identification where members have or feel limited accountability towards the practice. Regarding the practical implications of the study, members should understand that they have to continuously adapt to or change the group domain in order to maintain their identification with the group. Newcomers need to be given a realistic idea of the hidden entry requirements and can select to join a type of group (offline, online, hybrid) that is more suitable to their set of capital. Newcomer-oriented groups should place more emphasis on orientation and be more tolerant, whereas more established groups can allocate fewer resources on orientation.

Sociology has made three claims about why love matters: firstly, it matters to individuals and shapes their personal lives, influences the decisions they make and the actions they take; secondly, it creates networks of belonging and forges communities; and thirdly it is the proper foundation of human society and social solidarity. This latter claim proposes that love has a moral dimension because it is unconditionally and universally concerned with the well-being of the other. There is little empirical work to support these claims, however, and the project upon which this thesis is based seeks to begin addressing this gap. It is also argued that the nature of modern life undermines love’s moral potential because it undermines the unconditional and universal concern for the other. Instead it is claimed that love in modern society is underpinned by the notion of choice and particularity such that modern love is conditional and exclusive. Modern love, then, it is argued, lacks a moral dimension. Using Goffman’s concept of ‘frame’ as the theoretical foundation of the work, this research seeks to understand the shared ways in which individuals ‘know’ love, ‘do’ love and ‘recognise’ love so that it exists as a meaningful social concept. Using data generated through interviews, focus-group discussions and qualitative questionnaires, the claims within the literature have been interrogated. The findings suggest that love does shape the personal lives of individuals and creates networks of belonging. It also supports the argument that love in modern society is conditional and exclusive, underpinned by the concept of ‘choice’. It does not, however, support the argument that love lacks a moral dimension because of this. Rather, conditional and exclusive love is a means of bestowing extraordinary value to others and this is a moral action.

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This thesis explores young people’s experiences of transition into adulthood in Pilton, a disadvantaged neighbourhood in North Edinburgh, and considers how their social networks influence their perspectives and actions. The stories are told of young people, aged 16–23, including the challenges they face, the richness and diversity of their experiences. Their transition experiences involve families, friends, leisure spaces and engagement with the labour market. The study is located within Elias’ theoretical framework and highlights that strong social networks often flourish more strongly in contexts like this than in more affluent neighbourhoods. The research questions are: 1. How do young people in Pilton experience and manage transitions to adulthood? 2. How do disadvantage, stigma and violence affect the daily lives and transition journeys of young people in Pilton? 3. How useful is the concept of social exclusion to describe young people’s experiences in Pilton? 4. How helpful is the concept of resilience to support young people in Pilton? Main data sources have been fieldwork, carried out between June 2012 and May 2013, mainly in Pilton Youth and Children’s Project (PYCP). Desk-based and on-line research, including reviewing historical and contemporary documentation was undertaken to understand the context and to interrogate issues that arose – for example, to understand how embedded poverty and stigma has been throughout the history of Pilton. The study includes consideration of the usefulness of the concepts of social inclusion/exclusion and resilience, both prolific in contemporary discussions about marginalised young people and what ‘to do’ about them. The case is made for reframing the two concepts, returning them to their original intentions, and placing more emphasis on reducing inequalities. The challenges caused to young people by disadvantage, stigma and violence are significant. It is emphasised that these are faced within an unequal society, not as ‘socially excluded’.