Durante la última década, el dominio digital se convirtió en una parte integral de nuestra vida cotidiana. Hoy en día, la transición que experimentábamos anteriormente mudando de los espacios actuales de comunicación al ciberespacio, cuando Internet era una novedad en nuestras vidas, ya no es aplicable, pasamos de uno al otro con la facilidad de pasar de una habitación a otra. En este contexto, conocimos la arquitectura participativa de la Web 2.0 y el concepto de las redes sociales online, y poco a poco, hemos pasado de la invisibilidad del ciberespacio a la super-visibilidad que tenemos hoy en día. Con todos estos factores en juego, nuestras formas de definir, entender y construir nuestras identidades han cambiado considerablemente.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att beskriva vad personer med diabetes anser inverka på deras möjlighet och vilja att följa egenvårdsråd (patientperspektivet) och att beskriva omvård-nad som stöder följsamhet (sjukvårdsperspektivet). Studien har genomförts som en litteratur-studie. Det visade sig att alla krav för att hålla sjukdomen under kontroll innebär livsstilsför-ändringar, som kan vara så utmanande för patienten, att han kanske inte kan eller vill vidta dessa. Bristande kunskap om sjukdomen och om dess egenvårdskrav kan göra honom dåligt emotionellt anpassad till denna, det vill säga han har inte accepterat att han har sjukdomen och han vill inte låta dess egenvårdskrav inkräkta på det sociala livet. Detta ger honom för-sämrade möjligheter att hantera sjukdomen på ett bra sätt. Barriärer av olika slag kan uppstå mellan patient och vårdgivare. Det kan röra sig om en upplevd brist på information och stöd när diabetes diagnosticerats eller en känsla av att vara utsatt för läkarens eller sjuksköterskans stereotypa föreställningar och/eller att bli paternalistiskt behandlad. Till barriärer räknas även klinisk misskötsel, det vill säga att läkare/sjuksköterska inte följer vedertagna riktlinjer för be-handling.Vad som kan inverka positivt på följsamheten är patientens stöd av anhöriga eller andra i det sociala nätverket. Omvårdnad som stöder följsamhet visade sig varapatientundervisning, främst om den inriktades på att öka patientens självständighet genom att låta undervisningen pågå under en längre tid, så att patienten hinner integrera sin nya kunskap med det dagliga livet. Med eller utan patientundervisning tar det tid att bygga upp ett socialt stöd och ett förtroende mellan patient och vårdare.

Searching the Web involves more than sifting through a huge graph of pages and hyperlinks. Specific collaboration networks have emerged that serve domain-specific queries better by exploiting the principles and patterns that apply there. We continue this trend by suggesting heuristics and algorithms to mine the evolution of collaboration networks, to discover interesting roles played by entities. The first section of the dissertation introduces the concept of nurturers using the computer science research community as a case study, while the second section formulates three roles - scouts, promoters and connectors, played by ratings in collaborative filtering systems. Nurturers: Nurturing, a pervasive mammalian trait, naturally extends to most association networks that involve humans. The increased availability of digital and online data about associations lets researchers experiment with algorithms to gain insight into such phenomena. Consider some examples of nurturing: • Slashdot endorsement. Slashdot was not the first site to link to Firefox, but the publicity Firefox received from this association surely helped it become popular quickly. The phenomenon of many small websites crashing due to publicity received through Slashdot has become well known as the Slashdot Effect. • A VC (Venture Capitalist) seed-funding a new startup. This event has a high nurturing value if the startup’s valuation increases rapidly after the funding. • A blogger writing about a topic. Kim Cameron has nurtured the “Laws of Identity” topic if it later becomes the buzz in blog circles. A nurturer need not always be the innovator or originator. The evangelist who adopts a prodigal idea and launches it on its way to success can also be a nurturer. • A professor guiding his student through the art of scientific research and bootstrapping him into a vibrant research community. New nodes not only emerge around these nurturers, but also become important in the network. Knowing nurturers is useful especially in vertical search, where algorithms exploit the structure of specialized collaboration networks to make search more relevant: knowing early adopters of good web pages can make web-search fresher; a list of VCs ranked by their nurturing value is useful to people with new startup ideas; the list of top nurturers in computer science is a valuable resource for a student seeking to do research. This dissertation presents a framework for discovering nurturers by mining the evolution of an association network, and discusses heuristics and customizations that can be applied through a case study: finding the Best Nurturers in Computer Science Research. Roles of Ratings in Collaborative Filtering: Recommender systems aggregate individual user ratings into predictions of products or services that might interest visitors. The quality of this aggregation process crucially affects user experience and hence the effectiveness of recommenders in e-commerce. The dissertation presents a novel study that disaggregates global recommender performance metrics into contributions made by each individual rating, allowing us to characterize the many roles played by ratings in nearest neighbor collaborative filtering. In particular, we formulate three roles - scouts, promoters, and connectors that capture how users receive recommendations, how items get recommended, and how ratings of these two types are themselves connected (respectively). These roles find direct uses in improving recommendations for users, in better targeting of items, and most impor -tantly, in helping monitor the health of the system as a whole. For instance, they can be used to track the evolution of neighborhoods, to identify rating subspaces that do not contribute (or contribute negatively) to system performance, to enumerate users who are in danger of leaving, and to assess the susceptibility of the System to attacks such as shilling. The three rating roles presented here provide broad primitives to manage a recommender system and its community.

<p>The aim of this thesis is to study a job-searching process and elements that affects it. The elements I have focused on are gender, class and social network. The study is based on interviews and a survey study with students from the educational program of Social work (Socialomsorgsutbildningen), that graduated 3 years ago. Through the survey I have examined their social-background and their job-searching process. The interviews are the main focus in the study. Several of the informants came from working-class homes, and that could be one of the reasons why the informants chose an educational program that has low academic status. The majority of the students on the education program were female. In the employment process the male informants felt that their gender/sex gave them an advantage entering the labour-market. The social network, especially the informal network, was the most important part of their job-seeking process.</p>

Att drabbas av en plötslig och oväntad död som familj innebär en komplex situation där omvårdnaden fokuserar på den avlidne. Den överlevande familjen och de behov som uppstår för dem efter dödsfallet ignoreras för att istället centreras kring praktiskt omvårdnadsarbete kring den avlidne. Syftet med litteraturöversikten var att beskriva anhörigas behov av stöd vid plötslig och oväntad död av en närstående. Metod för studien var en litteraturöversikt av kvalitativ forskning med en induktiv ansats. I resultatet framkom fyra kategorier som beskriver anhörigas behov av stöd vid plötslig och oväntad död. Kategorierna är: Behov av god information, Behov av gemenskap, Behov av tröst och Behov av gott bemötande. Slutsatsen för litteraturöversikten är att anhöriga har ett stort behov av stöd från både sjuksköterskor och närstående samt att anhöriga blir förbisedda i deras behov av stöd. / Being affected by a sudden and unexpected death as a family means a complex situation. The surviving family and their needs after the death is ignored and the care executed by the personnel is usually focused on the deceased. Little time or none is given to the affected family and the support they need is often overlooked. The aim of this literature review is to describe relative’s need of support in sudden and unexpected death of a relative. A literature review of qualitative studies with an inductive approach was implemented as the chosen method. In the result four categories are presented that describe the relative’s perception of support in sudden and unexpected death. The categories are as follows: Need for valuable information, Need for social network, Need for consolation and Need for positive reception. The conclusion of the literature review suggest that relatives have a great need for support from both healthcare personnel and relatives and that the relatives’ need of support is easily overlooked.

Under de senaste åren har användningen av interna sociala nätverk (ISN) markant ökat. En orsak till detta kan vara den ökade användningen av publika sociala nätverk (så som Facebook eller Twitter) på arbetstid, då detta tenderar att sänka arbetsmoralen och effektiviteten hos de anställda. Ett ISN fungerar i princip som ett socialt medium, men dock innanför ett företags eller organisations interna väggar och fokuserar mer på att främja samarbete, kommunikation och kunskapsutbyte. Detta examensarbete utreder hur man kan implementera ett ISN i en mindre organisation och få det att leva i ett företags vardag. Vanligtvis används ISN inom större företag för att främst hitta och dela kunskap inom organisationen.I denna avhandling kommer jag (baserat på genomförda metoder) skräddarsy ett gränssnitt för Xtractor Interactive AB i ett ISN som heter Totara Social. Studien kommer att fokusera på tre olika faktorer som är utvecklade för att motivera användningen av interna sociala nätverk, i syfte att skapa mervärde för de anställda i den dagliga verksamheten. / In recent years, the use of internal social networks (ISN) has significantly increased. One reason for this may be due to the increased use of public social networks (such as Facebook or Twitter) during working hours. This tends to lower the morale and efficiency of employees. An ISN basically acts as a social medium fixed inside a company or organization's internal walls and focuses more on promoting cooperation, communication and exchange of knowledge. As one would implement an ISN within a corporation to mainly find and share knowledge. This thesis investigates how to implement an ISN in a smaller company and getting it to live within the organization. In this thesis, I will (based on the conducted methods) customize an interface for Xtractor Interactive AB in an ISN called Totara Social. The study will focus on three different factors that are developed to motivate the use of the internal social networks, in order to add value to the employees in everyday business.

Using social network analysis as a theoretical framework, the current study examined the associations between self-reported egocentric network characteristics and depression among a sample of United States college students. It is important to understand factors related to depression among this population due to the severity of its potential outcomes (e.g., suicide and interpersonal problems at school). Drawing inspiration from a recent study conducted by Christina Falci and Clea McNeely (2009), the current investigation used OLS regression to test for both linear and curvilinear relationships between egocentric network size and depression. Potential interactions between network size, density, and gender were also explored. As an additional line of inquiry, this project examined whether or not (and to what extent) perceptions of reciprocity mediate the relationships between network characteristics and depression. Data were collected using an online survey, which was proctored to students enrolled in three large undergraduate sociology courses during the fall 2010 semester. In contrast to findings reported by Falci and McNeely (2009), no significant relationships were observed between network characteristics and mental health. However, support reciprocity was found to be a significant predictor of depression at the multivariate level. Additional research will be necessary in order to confirm (or refute) the results of Falci and McNeely (2009) and to further assess the mediating effects of perceived equity.

Ecotourism from its genesis and founding theories has been set out to conserve and preserve the environment through sustainable operation that includes surrounding communities in efforts to reduce their poverty levels. Over the years ecotourism has been hypothesized to have departed from this ideal with several researchers, through social, qualitative analyses, have said that these non-sustainable ecotourism operations are simply due to poor management. This work sought to test this central hypothesis as a first approach to quantitatively linking ecotourism activities to management with surface water quality as the key indicator of sustainable ecotourism as a complex system through systems thinking. This pilot work was done by the use of two study sites in the Caribbean: Iwokrama, Guyana and Greencastle, Jamaica. From General Systems Theory, before systems dynamics can be applied there is a need to first observe components of the system in a reductionist view. This approach had to be taken also since the required data inputs for the systems approach were not available, as is the norm throughout the Caribbean. Thus by creating simple, easy-touse and transferrable sustainability indicator based reductionist-type assessment tools relevant data on ecotourism activities, management and water quality can be obtained in the future and acts as a start to understanding the true systems dynamics among these three entities. The creation of these quantitative reductionist tools utilized social surveying onsite, target plots, sustainability indicators and Social Network Analysis. Tools created were tested through what-if scenarios, with sensitivity analyses, and determined to be able to respond to societal, environmental and economic changes. The basic findings of these reductionist tools were used to establish and initial pathway for quantification inclusive of a framework in STELLA® for the numerical linking of ecotourism management, water quality and sustainability indicators in the Caribbean. This work also established water quality baselines for both study sites through in situ water sampling and testing and further ex situ analysis. As an indirect systems approach to linking sustainable development and the Caribbean, an audit of the Caribbean’s primary and secondary school’s system was conducted and recommendations suggested for the infusion of sustainability into formal education both during and after the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).

Inledning: Personer i det utökade privata nätverket (PUPN) bjuds in till nätverksmöten runt en individ eller familj i syfte att vara till hjälp i en svår situation. Studier som undersöker hur PUPN själva påverkas av deltagande i nätverksmöten saknas i hög grad. Frågeställningar: Hur upplever PUPN att de har påverkats av deltagande i närståendes nätverksmöten? Hur upplever PUPN att deltagande i nätverksmöten påverkar möjligheten att vara till hjälp för närstående? Hur upplever PUPN sig som belastade av huvudpersonens/ernas problematik? Metod: Studien har gjorts med kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Intervjuer med 6 PUPN har genomförts. Resultat: Resultaten visar att PUPN fungerar som både praktiskt och känslomässigt stöd till närstående. Samtidigt upplever de sig själva som känslomässigt belastade av närståendes problematik. Deltagande i närståendes nätverksmöten har lett till minskad känslomässig belastning för egen del, men det förekommer också till viss del oförändrad och delvis ökad belastning. I några fall har deltagande i nätverksmöten gett effekter mer fristående från de närståendes problem i form av känsla av ökad status, ökad självkänsla och förändrad upplevelse av relationen till den närstående. Det finns upplevelser hos intervjupersonerna av att ha kunnat vara till bättre hjälp för sina närstående efter deltagande i nätverksmöten. Några olika typer av hjälparidentitet har kunnat urskiljas bland intervjupersonerna. De mest kontrasterande typerna skiljer sig markant åt vad gäller upplevelse av egen belastning, möjlighet att vara till stöd och hjälp och inställning till nätverksmöten. Diskussion: PUPN med position mellan direkt berörda och yrkeshjälpare diskuteras som möjlig brobyggare mellan mikronivåer runt nätverksmötets huvudperson. Att nätverksmöten kan ge minskad belastning hos PUPN lyfts fram som en positiv bieffekt av arbete med nätverksmöten. / Introduction: Members of the extended private network (MEPNs) are invited to network meetings around an individual or a family in order to help in a difficult situation. There are very few studies that investigates how MEPN themselves are affected by their participation in network meetings. Research questions: How does participation in a closely related person’s (CRP’s) network meetings affect the MEPN? How does participation in network meetings influence how the MEPN can be of help for the CRP? In what ways do the MEPN experience burden of care related to the CRP’s problematic situation? Method: A qualitative research method has been used, and the study is based on interviews with 6 MEPNs. Results: The results shows that MEPNs give both practical and emotional support to their CRPs. At the same time MEPNs experience emotional burden related to the problematic situation of their friend or relative. Participation in the CRP’s network meetings has led to emotional relief, but there are also examples of partly unchanged or partly increased burden. In some cases participation in network meetings has given effects not directly related to the CRP’s problems, in the forms of feelings of increased social status, increased self confidence and changed relations to the CRP. There are experiences among the interviewed persons that they can be of better help for their friends and relatives after participation in network meetings. Different types of helpers have been identified among the interview persons. The most contrasting ones show differences in terms of experienced burden, ability to be of help and support and attitude towards network meetings. Discussion: The MEPN’s position between the suffering person/family and the professional network is discussed as possible bridges between microlevels around the CRP. The potential to bring relief to the MEPN is considered as a positive side effect of participation in network meetings.

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyse the significance of social support to adults with psychiatric disabilities, based on the individual's experiences. This includes research questions concerning what type of social support was perceived to be beneficial or restrictive, which relational aspects were considered having a beneficial or restrictive effect on the support- and recovery process, as well as what strategies and capacities the individual developed on their own in order to cope with their obstacles and disadvantages. The empirical material was based on qualitative inteviews with ten individuals that defined themselves as having psychiatric disabilities. They were each interviewed on three occasions. The repetetive form of the interviews lead to three separate interview guides being created over the course of the data collection process. The goal of the first interview was to get a general idea of the subject's daily life, activities, arenas, relationships and support. The second interview focused on meaningful relationships. The third and final interview had one general and one individual part. The general part focused on the subject's psychiatric disabilities, their opportunities as well as existing and desired support measures. The subject matters in the individual part were related to the previous interviews with each of the participants and aimed to develop or expand on previous discussion. The material was analysed using theories about social support and recovery and was presented with roots in four different networking entities: close and extended family, friends, coworkers and fellow students, as well as formal support instances. The result showed that it is the support with mobilising qualities that is beneficial to the recovery process. It increases the individual's degree of control over their illness, obstacles and challenges. In addition, it appeals to the individual as a central actor and as a person with difficulties as well as resources. The fact that the social support from the various support agencies have varying focus and direction benefits recovery since it increases the individual's opportunity to maintain as well as develop their social bonds and roles within the community. A relational prerequisite for social support is an equal relationship, which benefits the recovery process as it encompasses acknowledgement and acceptance of both the individual on a personal level and of their situation. The type of social support that hinders recovery is the kind that lacks a connection between the individual's perceived problems, their need for support and their over time fluctuating ability to handle their psychiatric disability. This is due to the fact that it robs the individual of control over the situation, increases the need for support and strengthens their perception of themselves as sick. Recovery comes to a halt when the individual isn't included in the support and recovery process, which is clarified in relational aspects such as lacking attentiveness, subpar acceptance as well as rejection. The individual's will and capacity to actively take on the responsibility to steer their recovery in a positive direction was made visible through four groups of strategies that were crystallised through the course of the research; creation of understanding and legitimisation, cultivation, including strategies and the creation of boundaries.