The rise of 'information disorder' that undermine Western political principles has become one of the key political concerns in current Europe and United States and led to searching for new solutions how to fight the spread of mis- and dis-information. While the nature of this danger is still subject to much debate, we can already observe a rise of new experts explaining the threat of information war and how to deal with it. This research looks at how this novel problematization of security affects the politics of security expertise. Or, who gains power in this 'battle for truth'? Building on sociological approaches in security studies, this thesis focuses on the Czech Republic as a country that has become very active in the fight against disinformation and analyses the network of actors recognized as providing security expertise on information warfare. Based on social network analysis, the research maps the structure of social relations among actors recognized as experts and points out the empowerment of think-tanks and journalists, who build their expertise by bringing together their social capital, bridging knowledge of Russian politics and the new media environment, and introducing new practices to make the society resilient towards information warfare.

Idag är det vedertaget att det är vitalt för företag att involvera kunderna i produktutvecklingen för att bättre förstå marknadens behov och maximera värdeskapandet av produkterna. Denna involvering kommer att resultera i en ökad innovationskapacitet för organisationen. Denna fallstudie har för avsikt att besvara forskningsfrågan; hur ska ett medelstort högteknologiskt företag fördela kundinformationsflödet på ett systematiskt tillvägagångssätt för att öka innovationskapaciteten? Forskningsmetodiken består av tre delar; såsom förstudie, social nätverksanalys, samt intern och extern benchmarking. Förstudien består av 21 intervjuer internt i organisationen och det sociala nätverket baseras på en enkät, som 49 individer har besvarat. Benchmarkingen har involverat sex individer från en intern avdelning och två intervjuer med externa företag inom samma bransch. Resultatet tyder på att mängden interaktioner med externa kunder bör reduceras för att systematiskt och strukturerat inhämta kundinformationen. För att öka informationsflödet inom organisationen bör en särskild avdelning, som har daglig kontakt med alla avdelningar, ha en informationsspridande roll som överför informationen från marknadsavdelningen till resterande avdelningar internt. Därtill bör spridningen av kundinformation integreras i den dagliga arbetsprocessen, då det underlättar att anamma och använda informationen i det dagliga arbete. / Nowadays, it is well known that it is highly important to involve the customers in the product development in order to better understand the needs of the market, increase the relations to customers and maximize the value creation of the products. This will result in a higher innovation capacity for the organization. This case study intends to answer the research questions, how to allocate the customer information flow in a systematic approach at a medium size high technology company in order to increase the innovation capacity. The research methodology consists of three different parts including pre study, social network analysis, and internal and external benchmarking. The pre study consists of 21 interviews internally in the organization and the social network analysis is based on a survey, which 49 individuals have answered. The benchmarking involves six employees from another department and two interviews with external companies within the same business. The results indicate that the amount of customer interactions with external parties must be decreased in order to systematically receive and maintain customer information. In order to increase the information flow within the organization a specific department, that have daily contacts with almost all departments, should act as a transmitting function as they would connect marketing with research and development. Furthermore, the customer information should be included in the daily working process as it is easier for the employees to embrace and jointly utilize this information.

One important part of the management of zoo populations is the exchange of animals. The removal of an individual can have unknown effects on the social dynamics of the group. Social network studies are a well-established method to describe the social interactions within a group. This study aims to describe the social interactions in a group of chimpanzees and to test how social dominance rank predicts social interaction patters using a social network approach. Data was collected via observations on Kolmarden Wildlife Parks chimpanzee group, which is composed of seven males and eleven females. A total of 50 h of data was collected over 16 days. This resulted in a dominance rank and four different social networks for different behaviors (touch proximity, proximity, affiliative and agonistic behavior). The eigenvector coefficient, with the notable exception of the proximity network, was rarely correlated with the dominance rank and the highest ranked individual was never the most central. The more dominate individuals had fewer links to others through proximity and affiliative interactions. My analysis of the social network structure provides some evidence that the removal of high-ranking individuals would be unlikely to disproportionally affect the structure of the social network in this group. I highlight the possibility of further analysis such as knock-out analysis (where you examine the consequences of the removal of specific individuals) on existing data and argue that more observations would help to draw up a well-structured plan for translocations of individuals in this group. / En viktig del i förvaltningen av djurparkspopulationer är utbytet av djur. Att flytta en individ från en grupp kan ha okända effekter på gruppens sociala dynamik. Studier av djurs sociala nätverk är en väletablerad metod för att beskriva sociala interaktioner inom en grupp av djur. Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva de sociala interaktionerna i en grupp av schimpanser och testa huruvida en ranking av dominans förutspår mönster i dessa sociala interaktioner genom att tillämpa ’social network analysis’ metoden. Observationsdata samlades in på Kolmårdens djurparks schimpansgrupp, som består av sju hanar och elva honor. Totalt samlades 50 timmar av data under 16 dagar. Detta resulterade i en dominansrankning och fyra olika nätverk för olika typer av sociala interaktioner (närhet med beröring, närhet, affiliativa och agnostiska beteenden). Egienvector koefficienten, med det anmärkningsvärda undantaget för närhets nätverket, var sällan korrelerat med dominansrankningen och den högst rankade individen var aldrig mest central. Mer dominanta individer hade färre länkar till andra genom närhet med beröring och affiliativa interaktioner. Mina analyser av de sociala nätverkens struktur ger vissa bevis för att borttagandet av högt rankade individer inte skulle ge oproportionerliga effekter på den sociala strukturen i denna grupp. Jag uppmärksammar också möjligheterna att med mer analyser som t.ex. knock-out analyser (där man undersöker konsekvensen av att ta bort individer från olika nätverk) på befintlig data, samt mer observationer skulle hjälpa för att kunna göra en väl strukturerad plan för flytt av individer från denna grupp.

<p>Similarity in academic achievement among friends (i.e., academic homophily) can arise from two processes, selection and influence. This study applied stochastic actor-based modeling using SIENA to disentangle friendship selection and social influence regarding academic achievement of Chinese adolescents in a three-year longitudinal sample of 880 middle school students (400 girls, year 1 mean age = 13.33) and 525 high school students (284 girls, year 1 mean age = 16.45). SIENA analyses revealed significant selection and influence effects pertaining to academic achievement for both middle school students and high school students across three years. Chinese adolescents preferred friendships with similarly achieving or higher achieving peers but avoided friendships with lower achieving peers. Friends’ influence on academic achievement can be both beneficial and detrimental. Chinese adolescents were more likely to increase in achievement when they befriended high-achieving peers, but decreased achievement when they were friends with low-achieving peers. There were no significant sex differences or school year differences (i.e., the first to second years versus the second to third years) in selection or influence effects for academic achievement. Influence effects were stronger for middle school students than for high school students, but no significant grade level differences emerged for selection effects. This study expands upon prior research by simultaneously assessing selection and influence effects on academic achievement and further examining the direction and strength of selection and influence processes regarding academic achievement using sophisticated modeling analyses. These results provide insights into the important role of cultural context in peer relationships and academic development by considering the strong pressure Chinese adolescents experience to be academically successful.</p>

This study discovers sex differences in multiplex links on formal and informal networks of Swedish local elite. Elites are widely known to have an immense influence on a country’s politics and governance, and proportional representation of women in elite positions is an indicator of democratization and gender equality. Sweden has long been known for democratic and gender equal regulations, and women occupy more elite positions relative to other countries, yet they are still heavily underrepresented in the elite. Previous research on Swedish local elite revealed that women in the elite do not differ from their male peers in terms of local network properties on formal and informal networks; however, the circumstances on the multiplex links are unknown. In this study, multiplexity approach is adopted as it is known for allowing to capture social processes in social network analysis, which could otherwise be overlooked. The formal and informal networks of the community elite from four mid-sized municipalities in Västra Götaland region in Sweden are transformed into multiplex networks, and they were analyzed for local network configurations by using exponential random graph model (ERGM) estimation method. The findings showed that women in the community elite tend to have more multiplex relationships than men; however, they significantly lack valuable brokerage positions on the multiplex level compared to men. Male closure on the multiplex level was found to be higher than females at a partially significant rate, and gender-based homophily on multiplex networks was not found to be statistically significant. One implication of the study is women’s position and integration in the community elite do not appear identical to men’s, and women’s access to social capital in the elite networks is more constrained than it was presumed previously. Another implication is that special attention should be paid to multiplexity in social network analysis research, as it is a valuable tool for improving the apprehension of social mechanisms.

Globalization impacts the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry; customers in the AEC industry are seeking lower costs, faster construction schedules and higher quality services. In order to keep up with the changing demand and to stay competitive in the global AEC industry, firms are forming joint ventures and outsourcing design and services work.  As a result, these new trends in the AEC industry require the collaboration of widely dispersed and diverse project workers and companies.  Accordingly, it becomes increasingly important to understand the impact of diversity on performance.  In this sense, the initial aim of this study was to find empirical evidence on how differences in national culture and language may affect performance in Global Project Networks (GPNs).  According to the results of the first experiment comparing the performance of multi-cultural versus mono-cultural simulated project networks over time, I found cultural and linguistic diversity to have a negative impact on initial performance. However, culturally and linguistically diverse project networks studied achieved better adaptation performance that has long term advantages. Even though GPNs have long term performance benefits, bringing the widely dispersed project participants together is costly.  Therefore, firms are seeking ways to employ collaboration technologies to bring together the project participants.  Little research exists to examine how to increase the efficiency of GPNs that collaborate using technologies such as virtual workspaces to perform design work.  In order to examine collaboration in GPNs utilizing virtual workspaces, I conducted two experiments.  In the first study, I investigated the formation and the maintenance of Transactive Memory Systems (TMSs) and cohesive subgroups as a proxy for performance in two facilitated and two non-facilitated global virtual project networks.  I found a negative impact on collaboration effectiveness when process facilitators engaged in content facilitation in virtual project networks, which restricts the establishment of TMSs. The findings of the first study revealed inappropriate ways of facilitating GPNs collaborating in virtual workspaces, which motivated the second study.  In the second experiment, I observed two global and two domestic virtual project networks that were appropriately facilitated.  I examined the interactions between network members in order to identify whether significant differences between the collaboration approaches of global and domestic virtual project networks exist. Facilitators were utilized more frequently in global networks, particularly in the early stages of collaboration. Boundary spanning visualization technologies within the virtual workspace were also utilized more frequently by the global network members; however, this was due more to the spatial richness of the task than the maturity of the collaboration. The overall findings have significant implications in improving the effectiveness of global project network collaborations in virtual workspaces. / Ph. D.

In recent years, disinformation circulating the internet and especially social media has become a widespread concern. The urgency of the fake news problem lies in the fact that decisions that are taken on false or misleading information risk impacting democratic processes negatively. This is especially true during a global health crisis when the misinformation in question concerns scientific facts and informs the way people act in society. Focusing on the relational aspect of fake news, new insight and hypothesis generation can be explored with a relatively novel method, social network analysis. This research provides with an example of the method applied to political problems by analysing the misinformation and fact-checking diffusion network on the Italian Twitterverse during the second wave of COVID19. The network shows a tight core of misinformation and a peripheral fact-checking region approximating a spanning tree. Although some levels of polarization are observed, the resulting network shows no evidence of echo chambers that hinder interaction between the misinformation and the fact-checking clusters. Actor-level analysis revealed that the majority of the users interacting in the network are humans and that influential and active users share misinformation only. The findings of this work are presented to show how network analysis can contribute both mitigation strategies in particular and to social and political sciences research in general.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most deadly diseases worldwide. In the United States, TB disproportionately affects foreign-born individuals, individuals living in congregate settings, people with human immunodeficiency virus, and people who use illicit drugs. In 2005, a large homeless shelter outbreak in San Joaquin County resulted in 67 individuals diagnosed with TB with links to a homeless shelter. It is hypothesized that by using bed analysis to identify contacts that have been exposed to TB during this outbreak will allow for better identification of exposed high-risk individuals than screening alone. Demographics, exposure, screening, and QuantiFERON-Tuberculosis results were analyzed using bed assignments from the homeless shelter database and data from a homeless shelter screening (HSS) program. Individuals diagnosed with active TB disease were on average more likely to be identified through bed analysis than HSS, 95.08% versus 59.02%. Utilizing both bed analysis and HSS allows for improvement of identification and continuous testing of individuals exposed to TB.

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