Peers are an invaluable resource for students at undergraduate universities. Many factors can impact how students form connections, some of which are tied to the students’ identities. While social networks have been studied in the context of universities, little research has been done specifically about peer collaboration and even less in the context of computer science classes. Our research aims to gain an understanding of how peer networks form in computing classes and the effect of being involved in one on students’ academic performances. We collected survey data (n = 139) about students’ peer collaborative behaviors in computer science classes. Several patterns were observed. Students were more likely to collaborate with students with their same demographic identity, including gender and ethnicity. A student’s demographic identity had no predictive quality on their participation in a peer network. Students who participated in a peer network had a higher grade performance in the class compared to students who did not.

This thesis examines development as a catalyst for the decision to migrate. Specifically, the two complementary theories of relative deprivation and social networks are examined to explore possible associations between level of household development and migrants' designation of savings or remittances towards development-related purposes and whether remittances are positively affected by migrants' participation in a hometown association (HTA). The study relied on data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), using the historical Mexican sending state of Jalisco. The MMP, using an ethnosurvey method, gathers data on individual migrant experiences, including border-crossing methods, jobs held, and participation in migrant hometown associations, amenities found in individual households, and available services in communities. No support was found for the first hypothesis, which predicted that relative deprivation was a catalyst of migration. Support was found for the second hypothesis, that migrant participation in HTAs, specifically in social clubs, positively influenced designation of savings or remittances for development-related purposes. This same support was not the case for migrant involvement in sport clubs. This thesis contributes to social network theory, pinpointing the positive effect that migrant participation in hometown associations has on designating money towards development. / Master of Arts

Social Network Sites allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within a system. Such sites are generally centered around a particular activity, such as maintaining social relationships or uploading user created content. Increasingly, niche domains such as education, healthcare and software development have been exploring the creation of social network sites centered around the activities of the domain. This has led to an increasing focus on the processes involved in designing and evaluating these sites. We argue that social network sites require a specialized focus in their design and evaluation on the social utility of the features on the site. We have created two social network sites for niche communities: Colloki, a conversation platform designed for members of local communities; and CATspace, a social repository of Computer Science assignments, designed for use by CS instructors and students. In this thesis, we describe the motivation, design and implementation of these two sites. We provide a formative evaluation of these two sites, wherein we evaluate the usability, and study the perceived social affordances of individual features across the two site. Finally, we discuss future work towards building a framework for evaluating the social utility of Social Network Sites at a formative stage. / Master of Science

Yes / Social media have become an important interaction channel between the government and citizens in the era of the digital community. The adoption of social media in local government services offers a new channel to encourage citizen engagement in the public policy decision-making process. Moreover, communication with citizens through social media exposes large opportunities for the local government to analyse and appreciate the relationships among social media participants in the digital community to enhance public services. The purpose of this study is to understand the local government’s social media network and identify the social role in the local government’s social media network structure. Thus, this study adopted the social network analysis (SNA) approach on the Twitter data of a local government’s official account in the UK as a case study. The study revealed that the internal local government stakeholders play an important social role in the local government’s social media network. The implication of the study was discussed.

Hung Wai San. / Thesis submitted in: July 2005. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-115). / Abstracts and questionnaires in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.ii-iii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.iv / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vii / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.viii / Chapter Chapter 1. --- The background and the orientation of the research --- p.1 / Chapter 1. --- The background --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Research objectives and research questions --- p.9 / Chapter 3. --- Organization of the thesis --- p.10 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Social network and the labor marker performance of new migrants --- p.12 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.12 / Chapter 2. --- The concept of social network --- p.13 / Chapter 3. --- The characteristics of social network --- p.14 / Chapter A) --- The strength of ties --- p.15 / Chapter B) --- Network structure and composition --- p.17 / Chapter 4. --- The importance of social networks in the labor market performance of new migrants --- p.19 / Chapter A) --- The importance of social networks in the labor market performance compared with other job searching methods --- p.21 / Chapter B) --- The importance of social networks in the labor market performance compared with human capital --- p.23 / Chapter 5. --- The analytical framework --- p.26 / Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Methodology --- p.31 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.31 / Chapter 2. --- Target population --- p.31 / Chapter 3. --- Sampling --- p.32 / Chapter 4. --- Data issues --- p.34 / Chapter 5. --- Focuses of the questionnaire --- p.44 / Chapter 6. --- Focuses of the interviews and focus group discussions --- p.46 / Chapter 7. --- Data analysis --- p.48 / Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Survey Findings --- p.51 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.51 / Chapter 2. --- Demographic characteristics of the survey respondents --- p.51 / Chapter 3. --- Employment performance of respondents in Hong Kong --- p.57 / Chapter 4. --- Job searching details --- p.60 / Chapter 5. --- Network Dimensions --- p.63 / Chapter A) --- The network structure and composition --- p.63 / Chapter B) --- The strength of network ties --- p.64 / Chapter 6. --- The effects of social networks on the employment status --- p.67 / Chapter 7. --- The effects of social networks on the quality of the first job --- p.70 / Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.71 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Explanation of the employment performance of Chinese new migrants --- p.73 / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.73 / Chapter 2. --- The selectivity of Chinese new migrants --- p.74 / Chapter 3. --- Economic environment and the poor labor market performance of Chinese new migrants --- p.74 / Chapter 4. --- The limitations of social network on the labor market performance of Chinese new migrants --- p.80 / Chapter 5. --- The low transferability of human capital and the labor market performance of Chinese new migrants --- p.90 / Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.93 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.95 / Chapter 1. --- Summary of research findings --- p.95 / Chapter 2. --- Academic contribution --- p.97 / Chapter 3. --- Policy implication --- p.101 / Bibliography --- p.107 / Appendices --- p.116 / Appendix 1-Chinese version of the questionnaire --- p.116 / Appendix 2-English version of the questionnaire --- p.120 / Appendix 3-Interview guide --- p.124 / Appendix 4- Focus group discussion agenda --- p.126

The main purpose of this thesis is to develop a malware threat avoidance model for users of online social networks (OSNs). To understand the research domain, a comprehensive and systematic literature review was conducted and then the research scope was established. Two design science iterations were carried out to achieve the research aim reported in this thesis. In the first iteration, the research extended the Technology Threat Avoidance Theory (TTAT) to include a unique characteristic of OSN - Mass Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP). The extended model (TTAT-MIP), focused on investigating the factors that needs to be considered in a security awareness system to motivate OSN users to avoid malware threats. Using a quantitative approach, the results of the first iteration suggests perceived severity, perceived threat, safeguard effectiveness, safeguard cost, self-efficacy and mass interpersonal persuasion should be included in a security awareness system to motivate OSN users to avoid malware threats. The second iteration was conducted to further validate TTAT-MIP through a Facebook video animation security awareness system (referred in this thesis as Social Network Criminal (SNC)). SNC is a Web-based application integrated within Facebook to provide security awareness to OSN users. To evaluate TTAT-MIP through SNC, three research techniques were adopted: lab experiments, usability study and semi-structured interviews. The results suggest that participants perceived SNC as a useful tool for malware threat avoidance. In addition, SNC had a significant effect on the malware threat avoidance capabilities of the study participants. Moreover, the thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews demonstrated that the study participants' found SNC to be highly informative; persuasive; interpersonally persuasive; easy to use; relatable; fun to use; engaging; and easy to understand. These findings were strongly related to the constructs of TTAT-MIP. The research contributes to theory by demonstrating a novel approach to design and deploy security awareness systems in a social context. This was achieved by including users' behavioural characteristic on the online platform where malware threats occur within a security awareness system. Besides, this research shows how practitioners keen on developing systems to improve security behaviours could adopt the TTAT-MIP model for other related contexts.

This Bachelors exam is about young adults and their use of Mobile Social Network System.The use of mobile social media has become more common in today’s society, ranging fromteenagers, the dominating internet users, to the elderly. The traditional purpose of use inmobile phones, the voice communication from one place to another, has in Sweden beendominated by text communication instead. Along with the development of Smartphones andthe mobile interface, the births of mobile social media have increased in the market. Reports have shown that of all the devices with the possibility to connect to social networks,the one kept closest to our bodies is the mobile phone. One of the advantages of using thephone for mobile social media is that you can easily and smoothly update whenever andwherever, within one arm’s reach. An update can be anything the user feel like sharing withfriends. For example the user’s location, feelings and thoughts or it could also be a picture ora video clip. Our report focuses on what factors contributes to the use of mobile social media, in whatcontexts the updates happen in as well as where, how and why they do.

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The hashtag #phdchat is used by doctoral students all over the world to engage with their peers, share information, and commiserate over their experiences in academia. Anyone can join the conversation simply by typing the tag and publishing a tweet, but many regularly contribute to what has become a vibrant emergent social network community. Using an analysis of the discourse that was labeled with the hashtag over about a one-month period, this paper draws conclusions about who belongs to this community and what the network achieves for the users and as an entity of its own. The researcher makes conclusions about this network by drawing on the attributes of communities of practice and knowledge building communities in order to ground it as its own permutation of a learning community. / text

Spatial and temporal patterns of urban vegetation have been widely studied since the mid-twentieth century, but these studies have focused mainly on northern hemisphere countries, and little research has been conducted in developing countries. Urban vegetation is characterized by the presence of species that are adapted to the particular environmental conditions of cities, and a high diversity of exotic species. This occurs due to a combination of factors: on one hand, it is possible to find wild vegetation (weeds) on abandoned lands or those with little intervention, as well as on walls and buildings. On the other hand, there is also an enormous variety of ornamental and mainly exotic species, which have been cultivated by humans. The processes of species selection performed individually or collectively are a major determinant of the diversity of urban vegetation and flora. Individual decisions relate to private spaces such as residential gardens whose owners manage the vegetation according to their preferences and interests. Collective decisions relate to public spaces, which, by their nature, are subject to the action of multiple stakeholders. At the collective level, decision-making occurs in the context of processes involving local governments, other state agencies, NGOs and various interest groups present in the city. Each of these actors has its own vision on the role of urban vegetation, their preferences and criteria for the selection and management. This study aims to investigate the processes of decision-making responsible for the current composition of the vegetation in public spaces of the Metropolitan Area of Santiago (MAS). Through this research is expected to identify the criteria for the selection of species to be planted in public spaces, the reasons that explain the predominance of certain species, and the difference between parks managed by different public agencies in MAS. The research assumes that the various public and private actors involved in the planting and management of vegetation in public spaces, act guided by criteria and preferences that are finally expressed in the observed patterns of urban vegetation. For this purpose, the conceptual framework of governance is used, understood as the process of decision-making concerning public affairs, which involves multiple agents or interests including government agencies, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups. The overarching objectives of this Thesis are: a) To contribute to the knowledge of interactions between governance system and urban vegetation patterns in metropolitan areas of developing countries, recognizing both social and environmental processes interacting. b) Contribute to urban planning and policies by generating knowledge relevant to decision- making regarding urban vegetation. A robust knowledge of the factors defining the composition and structure of urban vegetation is essential to design effective policies for increasing vegetation cover, with consequent environmental and social benefits.