Feelings of social connection are important to maintain physical and psychological well-being. Perceived social isolation, or loneliness, is the subjective experience of feeling socially isolated and may be a direct threat to our health. During recent years, an increasing amount of people report high levels of loneliness, potentially brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions. Recent research suggests that the brain’s default mode network (DMN), a neural network active at wakeful rest, is related to these experiences. This paper aimed to systematically review alterations in the DMN in socially connected and lonely individuals. I searched PubMed and Scopus to find studies using self-report measures of social connection or loneliness, and functional or structural neuroimaging methods on healthy adults. Nine studies were included in this review. Generally, core regions of the DMN typically involved in episodic memory and self-referential processing showed increased activity in lonely individuals and decreased activity in socially connected individuals. These findings may reflect how lonely individuals ruminate about past social events while socially connected individuals attend less to the self. However, methodological heterogeneity between studieslimits the conclusions that can be drawn based on these results.

Behavioral disruptions are highly prevalent, affecting almost all persons with dementia at some point during the course of their illness (McConnell, 2014). These behavioral disruptions in persons with dementia are commonly associated with decreased quality of life in the person exhibiting the symptoms as well as their caregivers (Fauth, Zarit, Hofer & Stephens, 2006). The purpose of this doctoral project was to design an intervention to promote socialization and engagement among people with dementia. A review of evidence-based interventions was conducted to identify effective non-pharmacological interventions to decrease behavioral disruptions in persons with dementia. The most promising interventions for reducing symptoms of behavioral disruptions in persons with dementia identified in the literature include music therapy, animal-assisted therapy, massage, activities-based interventions, behavioral management and combination therapies incorporating two or more of these interventions. Incorporating these effective interventions, a new program, Connections, was developed. The program includes a series of different daily interventions to be provided in a skilled nursing facility over the course of six weeks for residents with mild to moderate dementia. The Connections program is guided by a person-centered care philosophy and utilizes an evidence-based approach. Connections is designed to address the unmet psychological needs in people with dementia, such as fear or a sense of loss of control, lack of meaningful activities, loneliness and a lack of social interaction and decrease the behavioral disruptions.

As an emerging group that wields its increasing influence through social media, social media influencers (SMIs) have continued to grow as a key component of firms’ digital marketing strategies. However, several aspects of SMIs merit attention: their personal characteristics, content features, and how they influence consumers’ decision-making as well as online engagement. By using the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model together with theories of social connection and social influence, this dissertation reveals the influence of SMIs on consumer behaviors in tourism and hospitality contexts by investigating travel SMIs’ influencing stimuli, mechanisms, and audience responses. Study 1 extracts topics from comments on posts created by two travel SMIs from different cultures; identifies these SMIs’ personal characteristics and content features; and uncovers how travel SMIs wield social connection, value-expressive influence, and informational influence from a cross-cultural perspective. Study 2 includes a pair of sub-studies that quantitatively examine travel SMIs’ marketing effectiveness and unveil associated mechanisms by focusing on social influence theory (i.e., value-expressive and informational influences). Topic modeling, netnographic analysis with social media data, and experimental designs are adopted to achieve all research objectives. Findings extend the understanding of travel SMIs’ influencing processes in consumers’ decision making/online engagement and provide practical implications for applying SMI marketing in tourism and hospitality. / Tourism and Sport

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Thesis advisor: Micah Lott / How do we rectify structural injustice? Iris Marion Young presents a Social Connection Model that states those who participate in social processes that produce injustice have a forward-looking responsibility to redress the resulting injustice. Within some philosophical discourse, however, there is a general consensus that SCM is not action-guiding and is overly demanding. To supplement Young’s ideas, I explore Robin Zheng’s Role-Ideal Model; Zheng fills some necessary gaps left by Young. My aim in this paper is to use Young's SCM and Zheng's RIM in tandem to create a more action-guiding and ameliorative project for structural injustice. I offer a structurally sensitive account of responsibility for disempowerment that avoids passively repeating domination. I establish a prefatory set of tasks that can be applied to all roles. These tasks are an expansion of the terms mentioned in Zheng Role-Ideal:“raised consciousness” and “boundary pushing.” / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Submitted by Programa de Pós-Graduação em Mídia e Cotidiano (ppgmc@vm.uff.br) on 2017-05-02T19:37:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO_TATIANE0911.pdf: 2863924 bytes, checksum: 9ee997acbc3cf3b0be61b5a0bf63ab54 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josimara Dias Brumatti (bcgdigital@ndc.uff.br) on 2017-06-19T14:42:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO_TATIANE0911.pdf: 2863924 bytes, checksum: 9ee997acbc3cf3b0be61b5a0bf63ab54 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-19T14:42:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO_TATIANE0911.pdf: 2863924 bytes, checksum: 9ee997acbc3cf3b0be61b5a0bf63ab54 (MD5) / Capes / O presente trabalho se propõe a analisar as experiências dialógicas entre cinema e educação a partir do projeto Cinema para Todos, de oficinas de audiovisual no Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Partindo das relações entre Mídia e Cotidiano, refletirá sobre o cinema como estratégia comunicacional que vai do ambiente escolar até a experiência do espaço urbano como forma de compartilhamentos sensíveis e estímulo às invenções coletivas - essenciais à formação do ser. Tal análise tem lugar num momento da atualidade1 onde sujeito e sociedade sofrem importantes mudanças, a escola como meio de reprodução de práticas sociais passa por uma crise sem precedentes e parece haver uma transformação do político na sociedade atual em detrimento de um fortalecimento cada vez maior das mídias no cotidiano. Deste modo busca-se compreender em que medida a experiência sensível com o cinema pode gerar vinculações sociais dos alunos em relação a seus pares e às suas comunidades. Ao longo da pesquisa foi delineado um caminho cujos eixos centrais se sustentam no método de pesquisa de campo, pesquisa qualitativa com entrevistas em profundidade, pesquisa quantitativa com entrevistas fechadas e revisão bibliográfica para pensar o papel do audiovisual na intervenção do cotidiano e na mediação com a sociedade através dos conceitos de cinema (BENJAMIN, 2012; BERGALA, 2008), vinculação social (SODRÉ, 2010), educação (SODRÉ, 2012; SIBILIA, 2012), héxis educativa (SODRÉ, 2010) e experiência sensível (MAFFESOLI, 1998) / This paper is intended to analyze the dialogue between cinema and education from the Cinema for All project, audiovisual workshops in public schools of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Based on the relationship between Media and Everyday Life, reflect on the cinema as communication strategy in the school environment as a way to share sensitive experiences and stimulate collective inventions - essential to the formation of the. This analysis takes place at a time where the current subject and society suffer major changes, the school as a means of reproduction of social practices goes through an unprecedented crisis and there seems to be a political emptying in today's society rather than a strengthening of growing media in everyday life. We seek to understand the extent to which sensory experience with cinema can generate social ties of students in relation to their peers and their communities. During the research was outlined a path whose central axes are supported in the field of research method, qualitative research with in-depth interviews, quantitative research with closed interviews and literature review to consider the role of audiovisual in everyday intervention and mediation with society through the film concepts (BENJAMIN, 2012; Bergala, 2008), social connection (SODRÉ, 2010), education (SODRÉ, 2012; SIBILIA, 2012), educational héxis (SODRÉ, 2010) and sensory experience (MAFFESOLI, 1998)

This thesis aims to investigate social integration experiences of Nigerian students in the United Kingdom, focusing on the influence off participating in social activities and building connections with the local community. The research aims to understand how these factors contribute to the overall social integration of Nigerian students in the United Kingdom. Study shows that many of the participants form meaningful social connections with natives in their host communities. However, few expressed a preference for maintaining cultural boundaries and avoiding social connections. Findings show that, sense of belonging within the host community was found to be influenced by personal ideologies, experiences, cultural background, and attitudes. The outcome of this study provides deeper understanding of the challenges faced by migrants during the process of acculturation, it also reiterates the significance of establishing inclusive and supportive environments to facilitate migrants’ integration into the host community.

This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities, as they are severed from the structural analysis characteristic of the rest of the SCM. This thesis addresses the resulting limitations by developing categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. I develop 6 categories of prioritization: power, benefit, interest, centrality, contribution, and control. Applied to social-group-based analysis, these categories determine the strength of the prioritization claim which a given injustice holds over a given social group. The action guidance framework takes the perspective of the political community and works its way through three questions and their corresponding considerations: “What can we do?” –structural change, altering practices, and harm alleviation; “How can we do it?” –understanding sub-issues and sub-options, determining interests, and organizing collectives; and “What can I do?” –eliminating contributory behaviours, and considering personal circumstances. Through this framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute. Finally, the developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits so as to fulfill and not contradict their responsibility to eliminate housing injustice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning, meant to provide this guidance, are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities. This thesis addresses these limitations by developing 6 categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. The categories of prioritization determine which social groups ought to prioritize a given injustice. Through the action guidance framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute to them. The developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing injustice, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits.

Ce mémoire court a comme objectif d’appliquer le concept de responsabilité politique développé par Iris Marion Young dans Responsibility for Justice, ainsi que son modèle de connexion sociale, au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Au premier chapitre, il sera question en un premier temps d’explorer comment Young définit ses concepts et comment ils diffèrent des conceptions plus traditionnelles de la responsabilité. Au chapitre suivant, il s’agira de comprendre à quels problèmes philosophiques Young tente de répondre. Il sera intéressant ici de voir comment Young se distingue de J. Rawls, de comment elle s’inspire d’H. Arendt et comment elle se distance de l’approche nationaliste de D. Miller. Enfin, au dernier chapitre, ce travail termine par une application du modèle de Young au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Bien qu’il y ait des similitudes avec l’étude de cas présenté par Young dans Responsibility for Justice, des différences marquées dans les types d’interactions sociales à la source des injustices structurelles illustrent la pertinence d’utiliser le modèle de Young afin d’entamer une réflexion sur les solutions possibles. Ce mémoire court se veut donc être une sorte d’hommage à la pensée de Young qui est toujours d’actualité. / The objective of this short-form master thesis is to put in application the concept of political responsibility and its social connexion model developed by Iris Marion Young in Responsibility for Justice to the context of e-waste. In the first chapter, we will start by exploring how Young define her concepts and how they differ from traditional conceptions of responsibility. In the second chapter, we will see which philosophical questions Young wanted to address with her model. It will be interesting to see how she distinguishes her theory to the one of J. Rawls, how she seeks inspiration in the thoughts of H. Arendt, and how she distances herself from the national conception of responsibility developed by D. Miller. Finally, in the last chapter, this work ends with an application of Young’s social connection model to the context of e-waste. While there are some similarities with the case study presented by Young in Responsibility for Justice, the context of e-waste provides a different insight on the many types of social interactions at the source of structural injustices, and how Young’s theory is useful for a reflection about the possible solutions. This work is a kind of tribute to the thoughts of Young which are still relevant today.