This study aims to investigate on the social and cultural integration experiences of Afghan women in Sweden, in terms of their social networks and their socio-cultural practices. In addition, this paper questions where the Afghan women feel belonging to and what factors shape this sense of belonging. For this reason, a qualitative methodology is applied and the data is compiled through semi-structured interviews with ten Afghan women residing in Malmö, Sweden, with using both focus group interviews and individual interviews as the data collecting procedures. The concepts of socio-cultural integration, sense of belonging and social network have been utilized as the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the study. With regards to social networks, this research intends to investigate on the social interactions of the participants with people of their own ethnic group and also with Swedes. Regarding the socio-cultural practices, the eating habits and the holiday celebration and participation of Afghan women participating in the research are examined as indicators of their cultural integration. The findings of the study reveal that language proficiency is considered as the key factor for socio-cultural integration among the participants. In general, the participants experience different levels of social interactions both with other Afghans and with Swedes. The study also shows that while the participants are committed to the Afghan cultural practices such as eating Afghan foods and celebrating their holidays, they also welcome some of the Swedish cultural practices. In addition, mutual respect has a fundamental place in Afghan women‟s interactions with the host culture and values. Moreover, the participants of this study experience different notions of belonging, and factors such as their family ties, safety, and discrimination vs. acceptance shape their feeling of belonging to both Sweden and Afghanistan. In general, the findings of this study confirm Beg‟s statement (2005) that Afghan women are not a homogenous group, and experience different varieties of socio-cultural integration and different notions of belonging.

De nos jours, la popularité des réseaux sociaux (RS) est en constante progression. En effet, de plus en plus d’utilisateurs interagissent dans le monde virtuel, soit en y exprimant des opinions, en partageant des expériences, en réagissant aux avis d’autrui ou encore en échangeant des idées, en fonction de leurs qualités : influents, populaires, dignes de confiance, etc.. Dans la littérature, l’influence a fait l'objet d'une attention particulière ces dernières années. En effet, de nombreux domaines, dont l’Analyse des Réseaux Sociaux (ARS) et les systèmes de recommandation ont étudié l’influence, sa détection, la propagation de son effet et sa mesure. Ainsi, des modèles d'identification et d'estimation de l'influence sont aujourd'hui largement utilisés dans de nombreuses applications dédiées au marketing, aux campagnes politiques/sociales, etc. De plus, les interactions entre utilisateurs indiquent non seulement l’influence mais aussi la confiance, la popularité ou la réputation. Cependant, ces notions sont encore vaguement définies et il n'existe pas de consensus dans la communauté ARS. Définir, distinguer et mesurer la force de ces relations entre les utilisateurs posent également de nombreux défis, à la fois théoriques et pratiques, qui restent à explorer. La modélisation de l’influence pose de multiples défis et les méthodes actuelles de découverte et d’évaluation n’explorent pas encore pleinement les différents types d’interactions et ne sont en général pas applicables à plusieurs RS. En outre, la prise en compte de la dimension temporelle dans le modèle d’influence est importante, difficile et nécessite un examen plus approfondi. Enfin, l’exploration de liens possibles entre des notions, telles que l’influence et la réputation, reste un sujet ouvert. Dans cette thèse, nous nous focalisons sur les quatre concepts qualifiant les utilisateurs : influence, réputation, confiance et popularité, pour la modélisation de l'influence. Nous analysons les travaux existants utilisant ces notions et comparons leurs différentes interprétations. Par cette analyse, nous mettons en avant les caractéristiques essentielles que ces concepts devraient inclure, et nous en effectuons une analyse comparative. Cela nous permet d'établir une classification globale des différentes interprétations des notions selon leur niveau d'abstraction et leurs divergences ; cela constitue la première, contribution de cette thèse. En conséquence, nous proposons un modèle théorique de l'influence ainsi qu'une ontologie associée décrivant ce concept. Nous présentons également une variante de l'influence, inexplorée à ce jour dans le domaine de l’ARS, la micro-influence. Celle-ci cible un phénomène nouveau dans les RS que sont les utilisateurs avec une faible audience, mais fortement impliqués ; ces derniers apparaissent en effet comme ayant un impact fort malgré tout. En s'appuyant sur ces définitions, nous proposons ensuite un modèle pratique dénommé ARIM (Action-Reaction Influence Model). Ce modèle considère le type, la qualité, la quantité et la fréquence des actions réalisées par les utilisateurs, et ce en étant compatible avec différents RS. Nous abordons également la quantification de l'influence au cours du temps et la représentation de ses effets de causalité. Pour cela, nous considérons un type spécifique de RS: les réseaux de citations, particulièrement sensibles au temps. Ainsi, nous proposons un modèle, TiDIE (Time Dependent Influence Estimation), qui détermine l'influence, sur une période de temps, entre les communautés de ces réseaux. Enfin, nous combinons l’influence et la réputation avec le modèle TiDIE, afin d’étudier les dépendances entre elles. Nous proposons une méthode de transition, ReTiDIE, utilisant l’influence pour obtenir la réputation. Pour chacune de nos approches, des expérimentations ont été menées sur des jeux de données réels et ont montré la pertinence de nos méthodes / Online social networks are constantly growing in popularity. They enable users to interact with one another and shifting their relations to the virtual world. Users utilize social media platforms as a mean for a rich variety of activities. Indeed, users are able to express their opinions, share experiences, react to other users' views and exchange ideas. Such online human interactions take place within a dynamic hierarchy where we can observe and distinguish many qualities related to relations between users, concerning influential, trusted or popular individuals. In particular, influence within Social Networks (SN) has been a recent focus in the literature. Many domains, such as recommender systems or Social Network Analysis (SNA), measure and exploit users’ influence. Therefore, models discovering and estimating influence are important for current research and are useful in various disciplines, such as marketing, political and social campaigns, recommendations and others. Interestingly, interactions between users can not only indicate influence but also involve trust, popularity or reputation of users. However, all these notions are still vaguely defined and not meeting the consensus in the SNA community. Defining, distinguishing and measuring the strength of those relations between the users are also posing numerous challenges, on theoretical and practical ground, and are yet to be explored. Modelization of influence poses multiple challenges. In particular, current state-of-the-art methods of influence discovery and evaluation still do not fully explore users’ actions of various types, and are not adaptive enough for using different SN. Furthermore, adopting the time aspect into influence model is important, challenging and in need of further examination part of the research. Finally, exploring possible connections and links between coinciding notions, like influence and reputation, remains to be performed.In this thesis, we focus on the qualities of users connected to four important concepts: influence, reputation, trust, and popularity, in the scope of SNA for influence modeling. We analyze existing works utilizing these notions and we compare and contrast their interpretations. Consequently, we emphasize the most important features that these concepts should include and we make a comparative analysis of them. Accordingly, we present a global classification of the notions concerning their abstract level and distinction of the terms from one another, which is a first and required contribution of the thesis. Consequently, we then propose a theoretical model of influence and present influence-related ontology. We also present a distinction of notion not yet explored in SNA discipline -- micro-influence, which targets new phenomena of users with a small but highly involved audience, who are observed to be still highly impactful. Basing on the definitions of the concepts, we propose a practical model, called Action-Reaction Influence Model (ARIM). This model considers type, quality, quantity, and frequency of actions performed by users in SN, and is adaptive to different SN types. We also focus on the quantification of influence over time and representation of influence causal effect. In order to do that, we focus on a particular SN with a specific characteristic - citation network. Indeed, citation networks are particularly time sensitive. Accordingly, we propose Time Dependent Influence Estimation (TiDIE), a model for determining influence during a particular time period between communities within time-dependent citation networks. Finally, we also combine two of the abovementioned notions, influence and reputation, in order to investigate the dependencies between them. In particular, we propose a transition method, ReTiDIE, that uses influence for predicting the reputation. For each of the proposed approaches, experiments have been conducted on real-world datasets and demonstrate the suitability of the methods

abstract: Despite the prevalence of teams in complex sociotechnical systems, current approaches to understanding workload tend to focus on the individual operator. However, research suggests that team workload has emergent properties and is not necessarily equivalent to the aggregate of individual workload. Assessment of communications provides a means of examining aspects of team workload in highly interdependent teams. This thesis set out to explore how communications are associated with team workload and performance under high task demand in all-human and human–autonomy teams in a command and control task. A social network analysis approach was used to analyze the communications of 30 different teams, each with three members operating in a command and control task environment of over a series of five missions. Teams were assigned to conditions differentiated by their composition with either a naïve participant, a trained confederate, or a synthetic agent in the pilot role. Social network analysis measures of centralization and intensity were used to assess differences in communications between team types and under different levels of demand, and relationships between communication measures, performance, and workload distributions were also examined. Results indicated that indegree centralization was greater in the all-human control teams than in the other team types, but degree centrality standard deviation and intensity were greatest in teams with a highly trained experimenter pilot. In all three team types, the intensity of communications and degree centrality standard deviation appeared to decrease during the high demand mission, but indegree and outdegree centralization did not. Higher communication intensity was associated with more efficient target processing and more successful target photos per mission, but a clear relationship between measures of performance and decentralization of communications was not found. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2020

Survey instruments utilized to quantify relationships, or aspects of relationships, may introduce multiple sources of nonindependence"”clustered variance"”into scores, including from actor, alter and dyadic sources. Estimating the magnitude of actor, alter and dyad nonindependence and their impact on the reliability of scores is an important step towards assuring quality data. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis and the social relations model offer methods for quantifying the influence and estimating the reliability of multiple sources of clustered variance. The use of these methods is illustrated in the analysis of data gathered via a survey designed to quantify relational embeddedness in social network analyses.

Colder, harsher parenting attitudes and behaviours negatively impact children's behaviour and development, and have been linked to heightened levels of violence towards children. Parenting interventions can improve outcomes by reducing violent and increasing non-violent parenting behaviours. I investigated how changes associated with a low-cost positive parenting intervention spread through a rural, low-income, South African community. Specifically, I assessed whether exposure to a community-wide social activation process and Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) programmes (focused on violence prevention in low-resource settings) significantly predict: (1) improved parenting, and (2) change in the communication networks of female caregivers in the whole community, while controlling for variables such as psychiatric symptoms, parenting stress, and alcohol misuse. Additionally, I investigated whether ties to parenting programme attendees in the communication network predicted improved parenting. Afrikaans-speaking female caregivers (n = 235; mean age 35.92 years), with children aged between 1½ and 18 years old, participated in the intervention; three waves of data were collected (January 2016, June 2017, and February 2019). The social network was measured based on a peer nomination procedure (of study participants whom “you talk to about parenting”). To analyse the role of interpersonal ties as pathways for spreading intervention effects, I make use of Social Network Analysis (SNA), in the form of nominations of people with whom respondents discuss parenting, together with self-report measures of parenting-related outcomes (from caregivers and their children). I then trace the extent to which both the social activation process and the parenting programmes are effective, in part, via their diffusion throughout the community. SNA was used to disentangle whether network changes improved parenting practices (i.e., selection effects) or whether reported improvements in parenting practices improved caregiver information networks (i.e., socialisation effects). Analysis of data from waves 1 and 2 indicated that community-wide improvements in parenting behaviour were evidenced. The significant predictors of improvement were social activation “dose” received, change in network centrality and the influence of indirect exposure to the parenting programmes via attendees. Furthermore, attending at least one session of a parenting programme offered in the intervention significantly predicted change in the caregivers' communication networks, indicating the spread of social influence through their network. The small subset of caregivers (n = 51; 21.7%) attending one or more sessions of a parenting programme evidenced greater activity (i.e., covariate ego effect) and potential influence (i.e., covariate alter effect) within the communication network compared to caregivers who did not attend any programme sessions. This subset of attending caregivers were more likely to reach out to other caregivers to speak about parenting after being exposed to the intervention, and both sought and received social support from other caregivers. Follow-up assessment using a third wave of data showed that while attendees remained socially influential within the caregiver network the overall community improvement was not sustained. These results illustrate the value of social network analysis for ascertaining the pathways through which the intervention achieved its impact and tracking the evolution of social norms within a community. The results indicate an association between spill-over effects from attendees to non-attendees and community-wide changes through targeted interventions.

This master thesis focuses on the possible connection between the digital television broadcasting DVB and the Twitter social network. The target platform is the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV platform, which combines television broadcasting with a data received from broadband. The created system is composed of a HbbTV application and a server, that connects the application with the Twitter and searchs for additional data about the current video content. Usage of the resulting solution in real television broadcasting could potentially increase the amound of tweets related to the television broadcasting, increase the knowledge about HbbTV technology and attrack young generation of viewers. All that can result into slight increased number of viewers.

Záměrem této práce je analyzovat nové praktiky používané při plánování marketingových kampaní. Zřetel je dán zejména na použití internetu a sociálních sítí, které zaznamenávají v posledních letech značný růst počtu uživatelů. Navíc například oproti televizním kampaním, náklady na ně jsou podstatně nižší. Jak si na tom tedy stojí internetové kampaně a je vůbec internetová kampaň úspěšná? Tato otázka je jedním z hlavních témat, kterými se bude práce zabývat. Další částí bude analýza význačných a originálních kampaní, které přispěli k dalšímu vývoji užívání nových médií.

Master thesis covers methods for creating marketing strategy proposal for internet agency that provides online marketing solutions – Freya creative s r.o. Thesis analyzes agency’s actual condition and competition. Result of this thesis is strategy proposal that covers target groups, product portfolio and agency promotion using modern online marketing tools such as social networks and blogs.

Diploma’s thesis presents usage of marketing and subcategory online marketing to create basic steps or tutorial to start and to rise popularity of mobile applications developed by Programatori s.r.o. and publicity of company as well. In this thesis will be used especially tools of online marketing like social networks, and SEO optimization. These tools will be used during whole life cycle of mobile application.

Cette thèse a pour objectif d’étudier la façon dont les individus vivent ensemble et développent des relations ancrées dans un contexte international. Ces espaces sont marqués par une densité importante de situations d’interaction au jour le jour, où l’imprévisibilité est constante. Observer l’évolution des acteurs dans ces situations problématiques où ils disposent de peu d’habitudes, de standards, de manières d’être et de faire prédéfinies, permet d’apprécier le développement de leurs compétences d’innovation et d’ajustement et notamment de suivre la constitution d’un ordre d’interaction. Pour cela, j’ai mené trois enquêtes ethnographiques comparatives dans trois résidences universitaires internationales : deux Maisons Internationales en France (Fondation Ulysse à la Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris) et aux États-Unis (l’International House) et une troisième dans une Graduate House au Canada. Ces trois terrains sont relativement similaires sur plusieurs points : la population y est constituée d'étudiants diplômés de licence de différents domaines d'études, avec une forte proportion d'étudiants étrangers et internationaux ; les conditions de vie sont également comparables (cuisines collectives et sanitaires, salles communes, organisation d'une vie communautaire [community life]). Par ailleurs, les deux premières maisons portent un programme institutionnel similaire, activant une idéologie internationaliste. Leur comparaison et celle avec la troisième résidence universitaire permettra de saisir différentes ingénieries institutionnelles, parties prenantes dans la production d’une normativité pratique. Après avoir présenté les terrains, les méthodes et l’objet d’étude (chapitre introductif), nous suivrons plusieurs questions qui ont émergé sur les terrains d’enquête : la temporalité des sociabilités au cours d’un séjour (chapitre 1) le passage de relations d’anonymes aux relations ancrées (chapitre 2), la coproduction d’un ordre d’interaction, d’une idioculture et d’un ordre social (chapitre 3), une réflexion autour des commérages (chapitre 4) et enfin une réflexion sur les ingénieries institutionnelles et leurs engagements dans les sociabilités des résidents et leur normativité pratique (chapitre 5). En somme, cette recherche contribue aux travaux en sociologie et en micropolitique des sociabilités, en sociologie des petits groupes, en sociologie des réseaux personnels et en sociologie de la communication. / My thesis aims to study how people live together and develop relationships in an international context. These situations are marked by the fact that nobody masters beforehand these collective settings; indeed, they are marked by interactional unpredictability. How do individuals manage to live together, when they share almost no common rules, and no pre-defined shared ways of being? How do they develop personal relationships, and end by building up affinity relationships? What kind of skills of understanding and evaluation, innovation and adjustment, do they have to activate? In order to get a better knowledge of such situations, since 2011, I have conducted three ethnographic fieldworks: two in International Houses in France (Fondation Ulysse at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris) and the United States, and a third one in a Graduate House in Canada. These three residences have relatively similar general settings: the population is graduate students from different fields of study, with a large proportion of foreign and international students, also the living conditions are comparable (collective kitchens and sanitary facilities, communal rooms, organization of a community life). In addition, the first two residences carry a similar institutional project, advocating an internationalist ideology. The comparison between these houses, and with the Canadian residence, will allow us to grasp the institutional engineerings and the practical normativity coproduced by current residents in each house. After introducing the fieldworks, the methods and the research questions (introductionnary chapter), we will study several questions which emerged from the surveys: the temporality of sociabilities during a stay in student residency (chapter 1), the passage of anonymous relationships to anchored relationships (chapter 2), the co-production of an order of interaction, of an idioculture and of a social order (chapter 3), a reflection on gossip (chapter 4) and finally a study on institutional engineering and their engagement towards residents’ sociabilities and their practical normativity (chapter 5). In sum, this research contributes to sociology and micropolitics of sociability, sociology of small groups, sociology of social networks, and sociology of communication.