There has been limited empirical focus on the activities of the penal reform network in England and Wales, and less still concerned with those campaigning to reform women’s penal policy. Investigating the under-researched interrelationship between the women’s penal reform network, journalists, and policymakers at the crime-media nexus, this interdisciplinary study examines campaign strategies for women and how they have developed and augmented under changing governments and the media spotlight. While penal reform campaigners are able to rely on the discourse of vulnerability in relation to women offenders, this remains in the face of entrenched social constructions of the ‘ideal woman’ and a political climate that continues to talk tough on crime. Uncovering a number of inhibitors to their campaigning efforts, this study reveals that such actors operate on the periphery of both the media and policy agendas and campaign for a ‘lesser social problem’. Drawing on the work of Best (2013) and his research on social problems, claimsmakers and the policy agenda, this study also explores the agenda-setting models developed in the political sciences and media and communications. With unprecedented access to over thirty policy elites (including the Chief Executives of the major campaign organisations, former Prison Ministers, ex-civil servants from the Ministry of Justice, Members of the House of Lords and Commons, journalists, and a former Chief Inspector of Prisons) it integrates the viewpoints of key actors operating in this niche policy network for the very first time. With an explicit policy-focused orientation, it also provides a number of pragmatic and practical tips for those wishing to think more strategically about their ability to influence politicians, the media and the public.

It is well known that even the best conducted surveys often generate significant amounts of error during their design and implementation, best described by the Total Survey Error (TSE) framework. It is also widely accepted that cross-national surveys have the potential to increase that error further. This is because they most often comprise multiple national surveys under some kind of coordinated framework, whilst also having additional sources of error that stem from the cross-cultural nature of that work. Recently great strides have been made in identifying the sources of error that can impact on social surveys and how these are magnified in a cross-national context. This doctorate presents a body of my own published work that has contributed to the field of cross-national research. It has provided tools and approaches that help in the identification and correction of three overarching aspects of non-sampling survey error: specification error; measurement error and non response error. In each of these areas my contribution to the field through work on the cross-national European Social Survey (ESS) will be demonstrated, drawing on peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, a book and published working papers. This academic contribution has added to knowledge in the field and made a practical contribution by leading to tangible improvements in the methodology of the ESS and other cross-national social surveys.

This thesis explores the potential for food policy groups in England to render the food environment within their local areas more sustainable and resilient. The main question it addresses is how institutional norms, values and practices affect food policy groups’ capacity to pursue their aims. The research is informed by earlier literature identifying factors that shape the governance context within which a food policy group operates. It finds that institutions affecting food policy groups reside in four locations: within groups, between groups and their local authorities; within the local context; and within the multilevel governance context. The study design is five case studies: the London Food Programme; the Islington Food Strategy; the Bristol Food Policy Council; Manchester Food Futures; and the County Durham Sustainable Local Food Strategy. These were selected to have diversity in: local government structure; location of the group vis-à-vis local government; and progress towards a food strategy. Data collection was through document analysis, direct observation, and semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows the importance of food policy groups purposively determining and articulating institutions for efficiency and to foster actor agency to overcome constraints. Groups try to align their institutions with organisations they seek to influence in order to boost legitimacy and influence policy efficiently. Despite the dynamism of food policy groups and the difference they make in the lived experience of local areas, at present they are not prompting major change in the over-all food system configuration. This research applies new institutionalism to the study of local level food policy for the first time, enabling insights into how institutional factors affect capacity. It contributes new perspectives to the new institutionalist literature on agency and institutional change. The research is the first coherent exploration of the capacity of English food policy groups. It provides an evidence base to guide local food policy groups to be cognisant of contextual factors as they adopt structures and practices to maximise their impact.

This thesis explores the social meanings and lived realities attached to the phenomenon of youth gangs for children and young people growing up in Langview, a community in the east end of Glasgow, during the early part of the twenty-first century. Drawing on a two year period of participant-observation, the thesis situates young people’s understandings, experiences, and definitions of gangs in the context of broader social, cultural, and spatial dynamics within the area. In this way, the thesis analyses the complex and differentiated ways in which gang identities are enacted, and explores their intersection with developing age, gender, and group identities. In so doing, the thesis seeks to challenge pathologising stereotypes of youth gangs, drawing on nuanced accounts of gang identities that demonstrate the role of social development and youth transitions in the meanings and motivations of gang involvement. Against representations that construct the gang as an alien other, this thesis argues for an understanding of gangs that is sensitive to the fluidity of, and contradictions in, the formation of all youth identities – of which the gang identity is one. In sum, the thesis argues for the need to move ‘beyond the gang’ in understanding youth violence and territorial identities.

The challenge of rail passenger crowding has not been fully addressed in the scientific literature. This thesis describes a research work aimed at (1) investigating the relationships among the different psychological components of crowding and their effects on commuters’ experience of stress and feelings of exhaustion, and (2) exploring how the effects of rail passenger crowding can spill over to the individual’s broader work and life. To achieve these aims, an operational model is built that is consistent with the framework of Cox et al.’s (2006) model of crowding, stress, health, and safety, and is tested in a two-phase study. While Phase One of the research qualitatively explored the perceptions of rail passenger crowding and other associated issues among key stakeholder institutions (N = 5), Phase Two quantitatively examined the effects of rail passenger crowding on commuters’ individual well-being and their organisational behaviours (N = 525). The results of Phase One demonstrate that passenger crowding is perceived only as a minor problem compared to capacity, infrastructure, and service quality issues among the key stakeholders. On the other hand, the results of Phase Two reveal that crowding is indeed stressful for the commuters and has the potential to spill over to other aspects of their life and work. Using structural equation modelling techniques, the results show first the relationships among passengers’ evaluation of the psychosocial aspects of the crowded situation and of its ambient environment as well as their affective reactions to it, and the relationships among these psychological components of crowding and passenger density. Second, they demonstrate that the different psychological components of crowding together with rated passenger density are combinatorially predictive of commuters’ stress and feelings of exhaustion. Third, while the effects of crowding on feelings of exhaustion disappeared after controlling for demographic factors and individual differences in commuting experience, its effects on the experience of stress remained significant, further highlighting the negative consequences of rail passenger crowding. Fourth, the results reveal different patterns of spillover effects for passenger stress, particularly on commuters’ reports of somatic symptoms of ill health, their propensity for lateness and absenteeism at work, and intention to quit, but not in terms of their job or life satisfaction. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the existing literature and the operational framework set out at the beginning of the research work, which could lend support for future crowding research and management.

This thesis makes a theoretical and a methodological contribution. Theoretically, it tests certain predictions of procedural justice policing, which posits that neutral, fair, and respectful treatment by the police is the cornerstone of fruitful police-public relations, in that procedural justice leads to increased police legitimacy, and that legitimacy engenders societally desirable outcomes, such as citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police and compliance with the law. Methodologically, it identifies and assesses causal mechanisms using a family of methods developed mostly in the field of epidemiology: causal mediation analysis. The theoretical and methodological aspects of this thesis converge in the investigation of (1) the extent to which procedural justice mediates the impact of contact with the police on police legitimacy and psychological processes (Paper 1), (2) the mediating role of police legitimacy on willingness to cooperate with the police and compliance with the law (Paper 3, Paper 4), and (3) the psychological drivers that channel the impact of procedural justice on police and legal legitimacy (Paper 2). This thesis makes use of a randomised controlled trial (Scottish Community Engagement Trial), four randomised experiments, and one experiment with parallel (encouragement) design on crowdsourced samples from the US and the UK (recruited through Amazon Turk and Prolific Academic). The causal evidence attests to the centrality of procedural justice, which mediates the impact of an encounter with the police on police legitimacy, and influences psychological processes and police legitimacy. Personal sense of power, not social identity, is the causal mediator of the effect of procedural justice on police and legal legitimacy. Finally, different aspects of legitimacy transmit the influence of procedural justice on distinct outcomes, with duty to obey affecting legal compliance and normative alignment affecting willingness to cooperate. In sum, most of the causal evidence is congruent with the theory of procedural justice.

Calls for the involvement of service users and their organisations in the design, provision and evaluation of services are prominent in contemporary mental health policy discourse. Models and examples have penetrated national agendas, shaping definitions and expectations about the role and potential contribution of users. The social sciences have addressed this process, especially in the English-speaking world where service-user activism has a long history and involvement practices are well established. Most of this literature assumes that between the goals of service user groups, family organisations and mental health authorities there is continuity. If friction arises, it is marginal in relation to a set of shared aspirations: More prevention, better services, safer treatments, etc. This approach, common in ‘Global Mental Health’ interventions and calls, frames participation and users’ involvement as a technical decision in the hands of mental health systems. On the other hand, a critical literature, particularly based on English-speaking countries, has denounced the futility and superficiality of participatory agendas and their ability to hijack the authentic voices of users on the ground. However, the sharp distinction between a technical and a critical approach does not provide a suitable framework for the identification, description and analysis of the processes by which participation becomes relevant for mental health systems and the emergent self-organisation and self-differentiation of user groups. Applying Niklas Luhmann’s version of social systems theory, and drawing on interviews and participant observation with users, professionals and policymakers, this project simultaneously explores the emergence of mental health service-user initiatives in Chile and the ways in which users’ participation is - and has been - approached and defined by professionals and mental health services. As an exercise of ‘second-order observation’, it takes a step back from the technical/critical distinction, asking how mental health systems observe the collective actions of users and how autonomous user groups organise and define themselves vis-à-vis the observation and expectations of mental health systems. Through four independent papers, this thesis demonstrates that the way in which the mental health system defines and approaches the actions of users is less a result of their organised actions than of the changing needs of mental health policy for ‘user representation’, both at a broader policy level (Paper 1) and at the level of local participatory initiatives (Paper 2). Autonomous user groups, on the other hand, engage in the creation of forms of reciprocity and meaningful action at the margins of the mental health system (Paper 3). They embrace a politics of disengagement and incommensurability that challenges the interests and problematises the situation of social researchers (Paper 4). By adopting a constructivist, historical and reflexive approach, this thesis: highlights the role of policy shifts in determining how participation comes to be valued or devalued; puts forward an alternative approach to the political nature of users’ collective actions, based on practices disengagement, rejection and incommensurability; reframes ethical and epistemological tensions between academic research and activism in the mental health field. Finally, it demonstrates that, regardless of global calls, practices of participation are shaped by local policy scenarios and trajectories. These findings challenge the technical implementability of participation: although involving policy decisions and designs, participation is not a decision. It responds to contingent scenarios, it is subjected to complex expectations and its definition is the subject of contention by autonomous user groups.

Drawing on structural and relational dimensions of social capital, this study examines the simultaneous effects of both the structure of a social network and peer-to-peer relations within such a network on user innovation behaviour in online community-based innovation contests (OCICs). Specifically, it explores the interplay between relational mechanisms that drive and explain peers' interactions (namely learning and trust) and how diverse network configurations affect this relationship. Previous research has studied how either network structure or peer-to-peer relationships within social networks affect innovation. However, scholars know little about the way network structure and relational mechanisms interact in influencing users' innovative behaviour. Furthermore, OCICs, as a context in which user innovation occurs, have received scant attention so far. To address its objectives, the research adopts a single-case approach. The selected case, MoFilm, is an online community for film makers who compete to produce short films for global brands. A three-phase mixed-methods data-collection approach is adopted, which involves two qualitative phases and social network analysis of user innovators within the community. The findings unravel critical relational mechanisms of competence-based and intention-based trust, affective learning and cognitive learning. They show how these mechanisms interplay to influence user innovation. Furthermore, the results unravel network configurations of core-periphery, triads and a sparse network of strong ties, which act as major structures underpinning users' innovative behaviour. Finally, this study demonstrates how each of these structural configurations interacts with the unravelled relationships between trust and learning to impact on user innovation behaviour.

Despite extensive interest by academics and practitioners to understand and harness actor engagement (AE), empirical work offering insights into how and why actors change their engagement over time are limited and extant empirical research mostly focuses on the individual level of AE and fails to address its social aspects and the effects of A2A interactions. Therefore, this research is a response to both a managerial and a theoretical need for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the AE process in an online community, while accounting for the social aspects of AE and the effects of A2A interactions. Drawing on practice theory, this thesis sets out to explore the dynamics of engagement through the engagement practices of members in an online community, identify the full spectrum of engagement states, and changes in such states over time. The objectives of this study are twofold. First, to advance the conceptualisation of AE by adopting a practice-based approach. Second, to demystify the dynamics of the AE process and the effects of A2A interactions on such a process. The context of the study is the for-profit community ExpatWoman.com (www.expatwoman.com), which is independently owned and funded mainly by advertising. The researcher's philosophical stance is that of a social constructivist, hence social constructivism is the paradigm underpinning this thesis. To achieve the above two aims, the methodology of netnography is deemed suitable to study the selected online community, where non-participant observation of the Dubai forum is used and complemented by participant observation of offline meetups organised by the community. Summarising the main implications for theory and practice, this thesis contributes from a theoretical perspective by enriching and advancing our understanding of AE in the context of online communities in four ways. First, it advances the AE conceptualisation by adopting a practice-based approach, hence supplementing its S-D logic-based foundational perspective with practice theory and demonstrates that the latter can provide a useful lens for empirically exploring AE. Second, it enhances the AE dimensionality by providing empirical support for the need to include a fourth (social) dimension. Third, by using longitudinal data, this study is one of the first to empirically explore the dynamics of the AE process in an online community and to provide empirical evidence of the engagement conceptualisation proposed by Chandler & Lusch (2015) as comprising of two fundamental attributes: connections and dispositions. Fourth, unlike most of engagement studies to date, this research considers not only positive relationships but also negative experiences, and further explores the under-researched concept of disengagement by differentiating between naturally occurring and induced disengagement. As for the practical contributions, the managerial implications emerging from the findings are primarily relevant for the growth and survival of online communities as well as for starting one. It also presents a better understanding of AE that can better guide the development of organisational strategies and tactics to maximise the benefits of this highly promising concept. Therefore, this thesis aims at suggesting some tactics to better manage the engagement platforms in specific, and the engagement process in general in the context of online communities. It also responds to calls to explore AE outside the more established B2C setting (e.g. Hollebeek et al. 2016a) and contribute to the wider online community literature by focusing on a community of interest, which represents a substantial proportion of online communities and which has been under-explored in comparison to the more researched brand communities (Hartmann et al. 2015; Weijo et al. 2014), hence can allow marketers to better capitalise on the significant opportunities that such communities can present.

In this thesis, I present a new approach to interpreting and understanding the 2011 English riots. While recognising that this is one approach among many possible others, I offer a reading of the events of August 2011 that doubles as a unique re-reading of them. Re-reading the riots is an undertaking that is only possible from a perspective informed by the passage of time, in which the riots have receded and become part of the recent past. I draw on theories of media ecology and media archaeology in order to cast light on how the riots, the worst disorder in Britain in the twenty-first century, unfolded in and through media. I employ a multi-strand research design combining multimodal analysis of media data together with focus groups and interview fieldwork in order to better understand the riotous media ecology, and how the ecology of the riots has persisted over time.