This study explores online consumer complaining behaviour (CCB) on Facebook. The main objectives are: (1) to understand how Facebook is being used as a medium for consumer complaining, and (2) to understand why consumers complain on Facebook. An interpretative research position and multi-method qualitative design was adopted. Netnography, a form of online ethnography, is employed as the research design. First, participant-observational methods examined posts and discussions on Facebook’s official company pages, user-created pages/groups and user profiles. Then, online in-depth interviews were conducted with 37 consumers who were identified through online observations. These interviews were conducted in three forms: text-based, video-based, and email interviewing. The findings shed light on the nature (i.e. customs and manners) of online complaining on Facebook, consumers’ interactions with other consumers and companies, the role of Facebook in the complaint process, consumers’ objectives for complaining on Facebook, and outcomes of these. A key contribution of this study is the development of two models: ‘Integrated Model of CCB’ which aims to explain the organisation of complaining actions by integrating existing CCB theories and ‘Model of online CCB on Facebook’ which describes the range of online complaining actions on Facebook. On the basis of the findings of this study, research implications and recommendations for the management are suggested.

This aim of this study was to explore the various influences on the food choices and behaviours of Maltese primary schoolchildren. Using an ecological framework and following sociological theory of consumption it sought to uncover any group differences in food perceptions, beliefs, preferences and intake, as well as identify any culture-cuisine orientations of foods consumed in different settings. A multi-method grounded approach was adopted, where results from each stage of the research informed the focus of subsequent stages. A culture-sensitive research tool was developed for exploring children’s food consumption and preferences in ten different home-based and non-home-based settings. Data was collected via a large-scale survey with a stratified sample of 7-8-year-old children (N=1088) and their parents (N=932). Follow-up focus group interviews with children (N=16 groups) and telephone interviews with parents (N=30) were also conducted in order to obtain more detail on influences on food intake. Analysis based on gender, household level of schooling, school type, region and access to cable TV showed that Maltese children’s overall food intake was fairly similar across groups, though some specific patterns did emerge. Girls seemed to prefer and consume ‘lighter’ more ‘feminine’ foods and boys ‘heavier’ more ‘masculine’ foods. Children attending independent (fee-paying) schools tended to exhibit more ‘modern’ food practices based on novel and processed foods. They also tended to eat weekday supper with their family less frequently than other groups. Children attending state schools tended to consume more meat-based meals, milk and traditional Maltese foods. Children from the rural island of Gozo seemed to place greater value on balance, quality and freshness of food and ate their weekday supper with their family more frequently. A pronounced Westernisation of Maltese children’s diet was evident. Traditional Maltese foods were only predominant in home-based snacks. Grandparents emerged as having an important role in exposing children to traditional cuisine. Mothers’ provision of food for children was based primarily on hedonic and health motives. Strategies used to promote consumption of healthy food included controlling availability, information-giving and being prescriptive rather than restrictive. In general, both children and parents acknowledged the value of school food rules, although attitudes differed with regard to extent of imposition. Parents also felt that TV food portrayal was a strong influence on their children’s food requests, as was to a lesser extent modelling of food behaviours by peers. Children’s knowledge of the health value of food was good, though a few misperceptions existed and certain food associations were barriers to intake. Taste, texture, convenience and healthfulness were key attributes which attracted children to food. Local health promotion initiatives and nutrition education interventions need to target the different influences on Maltese children’s food intake functioning at the different ecological levels. These include the children’s own food perceptions, beliefs and valuations, as well as the different routes of influence of the mother, grandparents, the school and television.

This research focuses on improving stock tweet sentiment classification accuracy with the addition of the linguistic features of stock tweets. Stock prediction based on social media data has been popular in recent years, but none of the previous studies have provided a comprehensive understanding of the linguistic features of stock tweets. Hence, applying a simple statistical model to classifying the sentiment of stock tweets has reached a bottleneck. Thus, after analysing the linguistic features of stock tweets, this research used these features to train four machine learning classifiers. Each of them showed an improvement, and the best one achieved a 9.7% improvement compared to the baseline model. The main contributions of this research are fivefold: (a) it provides an in-­depth linguistic analysis of stock tweets; (b) it gives a clear and comprehensive definition of stock tweets; (c) it provides a simple but effective way to automatically identify stock tweets; (d) it provides a simple but effective method of generating a localised sentiment keyword list; and (e) it demonstrates a significant improvement of stock tweet sentiment classification accuracy.

My general premise is that sports and recreations are among the most revealing mirrors of many societies, offering a distinctive insight into social patterns, cultural values and even economic conditions. From this it follows that research on the USSR, using the sport-system as a case-study, may throw light on important characteristics of social processes in Soviet-type societies -- all the more so because the place of sport is evidently more central in the Soviet social system. This study attempts to show the extent to which the forms of recreation which developed in the USSR have or have not coincided with the predictions and aspirations of Marxist writers about playful activities in the society of the future. The study contains a historical account of sport in Russia and the USSR, with sections devoted to each of the main periods into which Russian and Soviet history is conventionally broken down according to the stages of its economic and political development. In addition, a special section is devoted to Soviet sport as s reflection of Soviet foreign policy. Sport is taken in the widest sense to include, too, the systems of physical education which developed in Russian and Soviet schools and colleges. The Introduction examines the various western and Soviet concepts of physical culture, sport and recreational activities.

The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the biographies and theologies of non-normative Christians. Prioritising the importance of sharing life stories as a source for theology, this thesis mobilises self-produced narratives from three individuals. By exploring the lives of the protagonists, we see how biographies and beliefs are revisited and revised throughout individual life courses. Mobilising resistance and rupture as characteristics of queer theory, I engage in a process which breaks free from traditional research paradigms. Thus, the secondary aim of this work became the development of an 'undoing' methodology, which liberates the researcher and allows me to approach and analyse the life stories using intuitive, reflective and creative methods. My critical insights on these participant stories reveal that all theologies are fluid, thereby exposing the temporal nature, but not significance, of all theology. Theologising from the basis of experience is always subject to revision. The process of 'undoing' theology points to a belief system based on experience which can never be rigidly fixed. The thesis reveals how 'undoing' theology is characterised by contingency, temporality, fluidity, becoming and unbecoming as its key indicators.

Cette thèse s’assigne comme objectif d’examiner l’évolution des évocations culturelles et théoriques des grands ensembles français entre les années 1960 et 2000. Notre recherche s’articule autour de la Cité des Quatre-Mille de La Courneuve. Prenant en compte les productions journalistiques disséminées par les grands médias durant ces quatre dernières décennies, les contrastant avec des créations artistiques plus dissidentes, les comparant avec des créations culturelles réalisées par les habitants de cette cité, nous élaborons un «complexe culturel» permettant un questionnement à la fois différent et «démocratique» des représentations historiques des grands ensembles. Le chapitre premier détaille l’armature théorique et méthodologique de notre étude. Le chapitre II propose une analyse rancièrienne des principes d’égalité, de démocratie et de politique. Les chapitres suivants (chapitre III, IV et V) retracent la trajectoire spécifique de la Cité courneuvienne. Le chapitre III se focalise sur les représentations journalistiques des Quatre-Mille au sein de la nation. Le chapitre IV est dévolu à la culture artistique et contraste d’autres formes de représentations esthétiques de la Cité et de l’identité nationale. Centré sur les productions quotidiennes de banlieusards, le chapitre V donne lieu à différentes représentations entre «banlieues» et citoyenneté.

The aim of this thesis is to propose transformational leadership a new pastoral model for South Korean churches. It is argued that authoritarian charismatic leadership has contributed to church growth but, as Korea is changing into a pluralistic society, it has not respond to properly the needs of Koran Christians. So transformational leadership being characterized as both charismatic (visionary) and democratic (participant) is considered as a new alternative since it can meet their new demands for the leadership, which is both effectiveness in evangelism and appropriateness for new changed socio-cultural milieu. Main focus of attention of this thesis is on disclosing the way in which the nature of leadership has to do with Korean religion, culture, and theology. To deal with them the salient features of transformational leadership is first examined in the three dimensions: culture (Confucianism), philosophy (philosophy of life of Koreans), and theology (theology of Korean churches). Then its implication in biblical theology is discussed, which is followed by case studies empirically. In the process it is revealed that transformational leadership can be applicable to Korean churches which, in turn, can give rise to continual church growth and respond to the needs of the times properly.

Background: Continuity of care (CC) is associated with increased rates of engagement with drug treatment, and drug treatment is associated with reductions in crime. However, performance rates of CC reflecting the prison-to-community transition for substance misusing prisoners (SMP) are low and, although guidance is extensive, non-clinical quantitative research describing this key process point within the UK criminal justice healthcare pathway is limited. Objectives: From a systems perspective, utilising a bespoke prison-to-community CC counting mechanism, this study aimed to: establish whether CC is associated with improved rates of drug treatment engagement, reduced waiting times and rates of return-to-prison (RTP); evaluate the impact on those measures post the introduction of the reconfigured single service delivery model ‘InsideOut’. Also, given this study’s pilot introduction of the statutory drugs data collection system into the local prison, describe a ‘first look’ pre-incarceration client treatment outcomes profile (TOP). Design: Observational, encompassing a quasi-experimental (before and after) analysis of impact. Participants: Adult, male substance misusing prisoners (N = 808) transitioning from the prison system to a local community drug partnership between April 1st 2008 and March 31st 2012. Results: ‘System’ level prison-to-community CC was associated with increased rates of and reduced waiting times to drug treatment. The introduction of the InsideOut service was associated with a stepped change in performance. Compared to individuals engaged with community recovery, SMPs reported a significant deterioration in all outcome domains prior to incarceration. Conclusions: Whilst the increased rates of prison-to-community continuity of care reported here were supported by the UK Department of Health’s statutory reporting mechanism, the decreased rates of return-to-prison contradicted UK Home Office reoffending outputs. Analysis of the national administrative statutory health and crime datasets is suggested to address this and other issues associated with study power, confounding and validity.

This thesis presents the first in-depth qualitative study of Russian complementary schools in Scotland. The fieldwork was conducted from November 2013 to April 2015 in four Russian schools in Scotland (in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee). The thesis offers novel insights and contributes to existing theoretical, methodological, and empirical research on migrant communities through a novel lens of heritage language complementary schools. It brings a new focus to existing work in this area through its consideration of language preservation as the key factor supporting this group of Russian-speaking parents to be involved in different types of social networks and socio-cultural transnational activities. Heritage language preservation is a negotiable process which flexibly responds to the interests of the parents, teachers and pupils who participate in the activities of the Russian schools and contribute to shaping their aims. These interests can be considered as the main driving forces for a wide range of aspects of the Russian schools' everyday life such as educational programmes, styles of teaching, the social relationship between members and additional cultural events organised by these schools. Russian-speaking communities bring together individuals with a range of characteristics (including different paths to migration, skills and educational levels, national identities, plans for settlement in the UK/Scotland). The present study has shown the importance of this diverse composition of Russian-speaking communities to the everyday operations of the Russian schools. By using the Russian schools as a context, the thesis brings a new angle to understanding how social networks emerge and develop in this particular migrant group, which has previously been characterised as lacking strong social bonding and bridging connections (Kopnina, 2007; Molnar, 2011). In addition, the findings contribute to the discussion of socio-cultural transnational activities provided by complementary schools (Willis, 1992) and their role in migrant community development (Moskal & Sime, 2015). Expanding on the existing literature in this area, the thesis investigates heritage Russian language learning as a two-way process influencing both the transnational activities emerging around the Russian schools, and the Russian-speaking community in Scotland itself.

The thesis consists of three self-contained articles that empirically investigate socio-economic differences in, and interrelationships amongst, science knowledge, biomedical self-efficacy, and participation in medical decision-making. Chapter 2 investigates age-related bias in the science knowledge questions in the Wellcome Trust Monitor Survey Waves I and II. It also examines what evidence there is for three dimensions of knowledge. Chapter 3 studies the influence of Internet use and paying attention to medical stories online in reducing science knowledge and biomedical self-efficacy gaps between low and high educational groups. Wave II of the Wellcome Trust Monitor Surveys is employed in this chapter. Chapter 4 scrutinises the influence of various socio-economic factors, biomedical self-efficacy, and trust in physicians and other medical practitioners on public willingness and confidence to take part in the medical decision-making process. Chapter 4 uses Wave III of the Wellcome Trust Monitor Survey. Chapter 2 finds evidence for age-related bias in the science knowledge battery of questions; no evidence of a misinformed group of respondents was found; a group who consistently said they didn’t know instead of providing an answer that was wrong was found; a sensitivity analysis showed that using the summed score approach leads to the same substantive conclusions as a model taking into account age-related non-invariance. Chapter 3 finds evidence of education-based knowledge and efficacy gaps. It also finds some evidence that the Internet can help reduce that democratic deficit in information. Chapter 4 finds evidence that people are generally confident to participate. Those who are more self-efficacious are also more confident to participate in medical decisions. The opposite held true for those who place high trust in doctors. Women were found to be more confident than men.