By enabling users to self-report their whereabouts and share it with a vast and diverse audience, location sharing systems can be useful means of projecting the self and expressing one’s social identity (an individual’s personal self-conception). Through three research studies, this thesis investigates how social identity influences the digital sharing of location. It does so by first exploring how people socially interact offline and then investigates how facets of this behaviour are enacted in location sharing systems. Thus, it offers insights into how offline social behaviour extends to digital spaces and how it impacts social interaction in the digital realm. This thesis finds that social identity not only influences digital location sharing, but in systems that enable social networking, is the very driving force behind the phenomenon. Users actively exhibit their identity through their location, using it as a means of communicating moods, emotions, activities, and experiences. Social identity impacts the places likely to be shared and those places, in turn, reflect one’s identity by revealing much about an individual’s personality and lifestyle. This research also discovers that aspects of offline social behaviour have not been replicated particularly well in the online world. Conventional location sharing systems often require users to broadcast their content to one homogenous ‘friends’ list. This model overlooks some of the key components of offline social behaviour such as multi-faceted identities, context-specific behaviour and the heterogeneity of human relationships. This can result in challenges when attempting to manage different facets of identity and can heighten anxieties about sharing as a whole. Recommendations are made on how such issues can be mitigated in future platforms. This thesis has implications for the design of future location sharing systems. By studying human interaction in digital environments, it also contributes to the Human Factors and HCI disciplines.

The popular and scientific literature has been discussing the advent of ‘big data’ with a measure of excitement and apprehension. For the first time in history, it seems, every breath we take, every move we make, someone’s watching us. But beyond their unprecedented volumes and the anxieties they raise, new communication data have a less obvious aspect, in so far as they are (arguably) of a fundamentally different kind, compared to traditional network datasets. Traditionally, social network data describe relationships between individuals; quasistatic social ties such as friendship, trust, kinship and employment relations. But when they are used to model digitally mediated communicative transactions, the connections are of a different nature. Instead of representing stable social ties, transactions (such as emails, text messages and phone calls) constitute sequences of shortlived events, with each transaction being a possible response to a preceding one and a potential stimulus to the next. The point of departure of this dissertation is the distinction between the topology of the tie structure and the temporal structure of sequences of communicative transactions. Theoretically, the dissertation explores mechanisms of co-evolution between these two structures at three levels of aggregation: (i) the macro-level consisting of the network itself or substructures within it, the level of an organization or a community as a whole; (ii) the meso-level consisting of nodes and social ties; and (iii) the micro-level consisting of sequences of interrelated communicative transactions. On the one hand, networks, individuals and ties are seen as the backdrop against which sequences of transactions unfold. On the other hand, transactions are considered to have (cumulative) consequences on the evolving structure of social ties and the network at large. Methodologically, the thesis uses a publicly available dataset consisting of email transactions within Enron, an American energy and services company, during the few months of its bankruptcy. Two methods are applied to identify and explore the mechanisms. First, the dataset is disaggregated into various types of email transactions, revealing how different transactions contribute to various structural properties of the network. Second, a multilevel analysis approach is used to reveal how structural and transactional mechanisms combine to elicit new communicative transactions on the part of email recipients. The mechanisms identified in the empirical chapters challenge received wisdom about the nature of social networks and their link to the notion of social (trans)action while at the same time addressing practical problems faced by network modellers who need to construct networks out of digitally mediated transaction datasets. In addition, the findings raise general questions about new types of data and the consequences they may have, not only for the field of social networks, but also for popular ways of thinking about ‘the social’ and ways of intervening in its course.

The unifying theme of the chapters presented in this thesis is that intra-group interaction impacts on in-group identity content, and this content provides a foundation for social action and social behaviour. The primary goals of this thesis are first, to demonstrate that social realities can be established and transformed through interaction; and second, to investigate why the process of intra-group interaction can spark and exacerbate social conflict. In Chapter 1, I review and attempt to theoretically integrate the disparate literatures on group discussion, identity and action. In Chapter 2, I investigate the effect of interaction on the positive-negative asymmetry effect (PNAE). In Study 2.1, participants were more likely to discriminate on rewards than fines, and find allocating rewards to be a more legitimate and pleasant act than allocating fines. Conversely, participants thought allocating fines would have a more negative effect on recipients and felt more negative about allocating fines than rewards. In Study 2.2, when in-group advancement was obstructed, no PNAE was found: obstruction was sufficient justification for out-group punishment in its own right. When in-group advancement was not obstructed, the PNAE reversed after group discussion, such that more hostility occurred when participants administered fines than when they awarded rewards. This reversal was mediated by processes of norm formation. In Chapter 3, I describe three studies which show that consensual intra-group discussions about a negatively regarded out-group increased inter-group hostility. Study 3.1 compared group discussion about immigrants with individual reflection. Results showed that group discussion informed the content of stereotypes, which led to support for anti-immigrant policies. In Study 3.2, participants discussed either an irrelevant topic, the out-group stereotype, or the out-group stereotype plus what concrete actions should be taken towards that group. Only discussion of the stereotype significantly increased hostility, suggesting that the psychological products of discussion per se (cohesion, identification, etc.) are not solely responsible for hostility. Rather, social validation of the stereotype explained why its discussion increased hostility. Study 3.3 replicated these results with a behavioural measure. In Chapter 4, I present two studies which controlled for the content of interaction by showing participants short films of similar others having a group discussion. Study 4.1 investigated the paradoxical finding that when groups discuss potential courses of action against an out-group, they are less likely to act than when they discuss simply the out-group stereotype (Chapter 3). Results suggested that when group discussions imply that there is social consensus about a course of action, even the advocacy of extreme actions can increase support for (more moderate) social action. Study 4.2 manipulated whether or not the discussants consensualised on the out-group stereotype, whilst controlling for discussion content. Only when the discussion ended in consensus did participants identify with the discussants and perceive norms for social action. In Chapter 5, I address how social identities and their associated (self-) stereotypes can disadvantage members of low status groups, but how they can also promote social change. The data demonstrates that consensualisation in small groups can transform (or reconfirm) such stereotypes, thereby eliminating (or bolstering) stereotype threat effects. In Study 5.1, female participants were asked why men are (or are not) better at maths. They generated their answers individually or through group discussion. Stereotype threat was undermined only when they collectively challenged the stereotype. Content analyses suggest that discussions redefined in-group and out-group stereotypes, providing the basis for stigma reversal or confirmation. In Study 5.2, male and female participants confirmed or challenged the stereotype in same-gender discussion groups or no discussion, baseline conditions. After a discussion that confirmed the stereotype, women displayed signs of stereotype threat and men’s performance was “lifted”. When they challenged the stereotype, the difference between men and women on the maths test was eliminated. Overall, the results reported in this thesis suggest that intra-group interaction enables group members to develop an understanding of their common ideology, which may establish the consensual basis of their identity content. If such consensualisation occurs, this provides them with a sense that their perceptions of reality are socially valid, and gives rise to (implicit or explicit) in-group norms. This provides individuals with a solid foundation upon which they may act. The implications of these conclusions are discussed in Chapter 6.

The original contribution of this thesis is through its conceptualisations of human more-than- human encounters on the allotment that break down the boundaries of subjectivities. This work extends knowledge of cultural food geography by investigating how people engage with the matter of the plot and learn to grow food. The conceptual tool by which this occurs is set out as processes of visceral learning within a framework of mattering. Therefore this work follows the material transformations of matter across production consumption cycles of allotment produce. This is examined through processes of bodily adaptions to the matter of the plot. The processes of growing your own food affords an opportunity to focus on the processes of doing and becoming, allowing the how of food growing to take centre stage (Crouch 2003, Ingold 2010, Grosz 1999). Procuring and producing food for consumption is enacted through the human more-than-human interface of bodily engagement that disrupts dualisms and revealing their complex inter-relationships, as well as the potential of visceral research (Roe 2006, Whatmore 2006, Hayes-Conroy 2008). Therefore, this is an immersive account of the procurement of food and the development of food knowledge through material, sensory and visceral becomings, which occur within a contextual frame of everyday food experiences. This study is contextualised in the complexities of contemporary food issues where matters of access, foodism and sustainability shape the enquiry. However the research is carried out at a micro-geographies lens of bodily engagements with food matter through grow your own practices on allotments. Growing food on new allotments is the locus of procurement reflecting a resurgence in such activities following from the recent rise in interest in local food, alternative food networks (AFNs) and food as a conduit for celebrity in the media (Dupuis & Goodman 2005, Lockie & Kitto 2000, Winter 2003). Moreover, the current spread of the allotment is examined as transgressing urban/rural divides and disrupting traditional perceptions of plot users. This allows investigations into spaces where community processes can unfold, providing a richly observed insight into the broadened demographics of recent allotment life.

This thesis develops a new way of engaging emotion in a large organisation and develops a new form of organisational practice entitled “Reflective Emotional Practitioning.” The thesis argues that the concept of emotional intelligence as accepted in organisations represses rather than embraces emotion. The conceptual framework centres the inquiry on the problem of organisational power as an obstacle to the creative harnessing of emotion at work. The thesis reverses the organisations’ centralised power by placing the individual at the centre so that the individual learns to reflect upon and embrace emotion in collective and self inquiry, and demonstrates how this may lead to creative and ethical work. The thesis is divided into two parts: in the first, the author carried out action research workshops on emotional intelligence and performance management, but it became clear that power was an issue, repressing emotions. But through reflection this became a turning point after the author engaged in deep self-reflection in meditative supervisions, writing and reflective practice. This enabled the author to process experience into a methodological shift towards a self-ethnography and research action applied to the work situation in what became called Reflective Emotional Practitioning (REP). The REP model was used as a tool to venture further on a visceral pathway, uncovering the author’s relationship with emotion. The author began to recognise that the self and the other could be held in reflexive practice and writing. In the second part evidence comes through further vignettes representing the author’s pathway and shone a light on a dialogical process between the self and others. Freedom and space were revealed and the research began to demonstrate the inner- and outer-selves working through emotion. Through this process emotion became conceptualised as “felt energy”. Felt energy was triggered by the outer world, but also a place of knowing from which further action could be taken, and then further reflected upon. The reflexive writing process used vignettes to illustrate how emotion was engaged, fed back and stored as a “return to the self” in a continual learning process. Through illuminating a new way of both conceptualising and working with emotions, the author shows how, over several years of reflective practice, the method underpinned some major innovative and sustainable work projects. The thesis concludes by defining the contribution of this research as a transferable approach that can engage emotion in self-empowered actions within an organisation’s power regime. The contribution is to both methodology and knowledge about the way emotion is experienced, used and conceptualised, although the author acknowledges and discusses the difficulty of producing knowledge through writing the self, particularly within the confines of a large public sector organisation. However, the struggle to write the self has produced a rich text that conveys the possibilities of transferring the approach for other organisational researchers and reflective practitioners engaging emotion in their different personal and organisational contexts.

The primary aim of this thesis is to defend the idea that there are ontologically collective forms of thought and action. This is to say, that there are at least some instances in which a thought or action is appropriately ascribed not to the individual members of a group, but only to the group as a whole. In chapters 2 and 4 existing attempts, primarily in analytic philosophy, to defend such phenomena by appealing to either the content, mode, or subject of intentional states are criticised. These criticisms in turn motivate an alternative understanding of subjectivity, outlined in chapters 3 and 5. This alternative draws on the phenomenological work of Dan Zahavi and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to argue that subjectivity must be understood, firstly, as constituted by the pre-reflective self-awareness that is central to all intentional experience and, secondly, as intrinsically bodily. Finally, in chapter 6, and by drawing on Merleau-Ponty's thoughts on habituation and intersubjectivity, it is argued that it is possible to understand groups as continually in the process of developing such a form of plural bodily subjectivity through processes of group-level habituation. Overall, therefore, a radical position will be defended, which holds that not only can groups think and act in an ontologically collective sense, but that they can do so in virtue of the fact that they can achieve a certain level of phenomenal self-consciousness. However, this position will be tempered by the thought that unified self-awareness and subjectivity is a matter of degree; where to have a unified pre-reflective sense of self is to be an individual subject, groups must be understood as always in the process of developing a form of unity that is, ultimately, out of their grasp.

Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des échanges d’informations au cours desquels des états mentaux individuels se succèdent. Comment pouvons-nous dès lors être « ensemble » et partager un moment ? Dans cette thèse, nous optons pour une perspective centrée sur la coordination temporelle des comportements des personnes en interaction, en nous intéressant aux phénomènes de dynamiques collectives incarnées. Ces dynamiques coordonnent communément les comportements et émergent directement du processus d’interaction mutuel lui-même. Pour évaluer cette proposition, nous avons mené trois expériences. Notre méthodologie générale distinguait trois situations types : une situation de coordination individuelle, une situation pseudo-sociale dans laquelle le comportement doit être coordonné à celui d’une autre personne sans que la réciproque soit vraie, et enfin une situation dans laquelle l’interaction est mutuelle. Une première expérience nous a permis de montrer que la mutualité de l’interaction suffisait à induire une coordination entre les participants, dont les comportements étaient pris dans une dynamique collective qui leur échappait totalement. Ensuite, nous avons montré que la mutualité de l’interaction augmentait la stabilité des interactions rythmiques et provoquait un appariement de la complexité des comportements. Enfin, nous avons montré qu’en dépit d’un environnement commun très structuré, la mutualité de l’interaction induisait une organisation légèrement plus coordonnée du temps. Nous discutons ces résultats en regard de notre objet de recherche et de notre arrière-plan théorique / Social interactions are mostly seen as information exchanges during which individual mental states follow each other. How could we, accordingly, be « toghether » and share a moment ? In this thesis, we took a perspective focused on the temporal coordinations of interpersonal behaviors as they occur in the course of interactions, by studying the phenomenon of embodied collective dynamics. Such dynamics manifest coordinates behaviors mutually and emerge from the interaction process itself. To evaluate this hypothesis, we devised three experimental paradigms. We used a general methodology in which three typical situations are distinguished : the individual situation in which participants possess all the capacities to pursue the goal of the task, a pseudo-social situation in which behavior can be coordinated to the mouvement of an other, and a situation in which the interaction is mutual. In the first experiment, we showed the mutuality of interaction was sufficient to induce participants, whose behaviors were caught in collective dynamics unbeknownst to them. Then, we showed that mutuality of interaction was enhancing the stability of rhythmic interactions as well as the complexity matching between their behaviors. Finally, we showed that, in despite of a temporary structured environment, mutuality of interaction induced a slight more coordinated temporal organization of behaviors. We discuss these results in respect of our object of research and our theoretical background

The thesis set out in this submission is drawn from six of the candidate’s publications, based in turn on empirical findings from four research studies of adult social care in England spanning the period 1992 2006. As a body of work, it interrogates the validity of Lipsky’s (1980) conclusions about the origins and nature of ‘streetlevel bureaucracy’ in the wake of subsequent welfare restructuring. The earlier studies pay particular attention to the impact of managerialisation on frontline assessment practice amongst adult social work teams following implementation of the 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act. Later studies tackle a further challenge to Lipsky’s thesis of street-level bureaucracy, that is, the potential for a change in the nature of the exchange relationship between street-level bureaucrat and client in the light of the insertion of service user involvement, empowerment and rights into governance arrangements after 1990, including adult social care. The candidate argues that the ethnomethodological approach adopted in three out of the four studies has yielded rich data on frontline practice of a type screened out by much contemporaneous research on the impact of social care reforms. Taken together with the span of the research studies over some fifteen years, this has supported not only a detailed analysis of the relationship between the micropolitics of assessment practice and key features of the differing environments within which they occur but also their articulation with changing modes of welfare governance. Discourse analysis of interview findings from the remaining study has permitted insights into the way social workers integrate thinking about human and social rights into their everyday assessment practice. The candidate summarises her threefold contribution to the literature in a taxonomy derived from the research findings which serves, firstly, to articulate the relationship between core dimensions of the policy and practice environment and the differing forms of frontline discretion to emerge after 1990; secondly, to explore the impact of user empowerment and rights on the distribution of resources; and, thirdly, to evaluate the continuing relevance of ‘streetlevel’ bureaucracy for understanding frontline social work practice. She concludes by sketching out possible future directions for her work.

Η έρευνα εξετάζει την αντίληψη που έχει η πολιτισμική ομάδα των αλλοδαπών μαθητών, γύρω από τα συναισθήματα, τις εμπειρίες και τις εντυπώσεις που έχουν αναπτύξει μέσω της συμπεριφοράς των άλλων μαθητών σε καταστάσεις αλληλεπίδρασης. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, εξετάσαμε αν η πολιτισμική μειονότητα των αλλοδαπών μαθητών θεωρεί τον εαυτό της στιγματισμένη και περιθωριοποιημένη με το να προκαλεί στους άλλους προκαταλήψεις και στερεότυπα. Εξετάσαμε, επίσης, πώς άλλοι παράγοντες, όπως η καταγωγή, το φύλο, η ηλικία και ο τόπος διαμονής επηρεάζουν αυτήν την αντίληψη. Στην έρευνα συμμετείχαν 411 αλλοδαποί μαθητές Δημοτικών Σχολείων των νομών Αχαΐας, Ηλείας και Αιτωλοακαρνανίας. Στους μαθητές δόθηκε το ερωτηματολόγιο της συνείδησης του στίγματος. Τα αποτελέσματα κατέδειξαν ότι ένα μεγάλο ποσοστό των αλλοδαπών μαθητών συνειδητοποιούν το στίγμα. Ανέδειξαν, επίσης, ότι ο παράγοντας της καταγωγής επηρεάζει τη συνείδηση του στίγματος, ενώ άλλοι παράγοντες δεν την επηρεάζουν. / The research examines the percipience held by the cultural group of the foreign students about their feelings, experiences and impressions they have developed through the behavior of other students in interactive situations. In particular, we examined if the cultural minority of the foreign students considers itself as stigmatized and marginal by causing to others prejudices and stereotypes. We also examined how other factors, like the origin, the sex, the age and the place of living, influence that percipience. In the research participated 411 foreign students of the elementary schools of the regions Achaia, Ileia and Aitoloakarnania. The students were given the stigma consciousness questionnaire. The results showed that a great percentage of the foreign students become conscious of these facts. They also revealed that the factor of origin influence this percipience while others factors does not affect stigma consciousness.

This thesis seeks to extend the application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to temporal graphs, in particular providing new insights for the understanding of covert networks. The analyses undertaken reveal informative features and properties of individuals' affiliations under covertness that also illustrate how both individuals and events influence the network structure. The review of the literature on covert networks provided in the initial two chapters suggests the presence of some ambiguities concerning how authors define structural properties and dynamics of covert networks. Authors sometimes disagree and use their findings to explain opposite views about covert networks. The controversy in the field is used as a starting point in order to justify the methodological application of SNA to understand how individuals involved in criminal and illegal activities interact with each other. I attempt to use a deductive approach, without preconceived notions about covert network characteristics. In particular, I avoid considering covert networks as organisations in themselves or as cohesive groups. I focus on individuals and their linkages constructed from their common participation in illicit events such as secret meetings, bombing attacks and criminal operations. In order to tackle these processes I developed innovative methods for investigating criminals' behaviours over time and their willingness to exchange tacit information. The strategy implies the formulation of a network model in order to represent and incorporate in a graph three types of information: individuals, events, and the temporal dimension of events. The inclusion of the temporal dimension offers the possibility of adopting a more comprehensive theoretical framework for considering individuals and event affiliations. This thesis expands the analysis of bipartite covert networks by adopting several avenues to explore in this perspective. Chapter 3 proposes a different way to represent two-mode networks starting from the use of line-graphs, namely the bi-dynamic line-graph data representation (BDLG), through which it is possible to represent the temporal evolution of individual's trajectories. The following chapter 4 presents some reflections about the idea of cohesion and cohesive subgroups specific to the case of two-mode networks. Based on the affiliation matrices, the analysis of local clustering through bi-cliques offers an attempt to analyse the mechanism of selecting accomplices while taking into account time. Chapter 5 is concerned with the concept of centrality of individuals involved in flows of knowledge exchanges. The theoretical and analytical framework helps in elaborating how individuals share their acquired hands-on experiences with others by attending joint task activities over time. Chapter 6 provides an application of the approaches introduced in the preceding chapters to the specific case of the Noordin Top terrorist network. Here, the knowledge of experience flow centrality measure opens up a new way to quantify the transmission of information and investigate the formation of the criminal capital. Finally, the last Chapter 7 presents some future research extensions by illustrating the versatility of the proposed approaches in order to provide new insights for the understanding of criminals' behaviours.