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The predominant theorists of community in American sociology define community as either geographically confined local solidarities or as networks or relatively close primary ties. These definitions fail to recognize the realities of modern life, let alone life in the context of a global economy. Community according to the earliest community sociologists was a way of organizing society wherein all the social interactions necessary to the reproduction of daily life were embedded in moral relationships, which were historically primary ties located within local solidary communities. With modernity, most of these social interactions have been removed from those moral relationships, and now occur on in a global marketplace where individuals feel no moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. In such a context, today's predominant theories are no longer viable. In order for community sociology to remain relevant, we need an approach to community which reincorporates all of interactions necessary to daily life and that recognizes the social costs of modernity. The three articles in this dissertation together offer critiques of today's predominant theoretical approaches—the Community Saved and Community Liberated arguments, as Barry Wellman has named them—and provide an alternative that is suited to social life embedded in a global marketplace. The alternative is based on an honest reading of the so-called Community Lost argument—honest in that it is not biased by the straw men built up by the Community Saved and Community Liberated proponents—and extends that argument to include the work of several late-modern theorists (particularly, Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck). This revived version of the Community Lost argument allows us to address directly all the social interactions necessary to community and to understand the relevance of local solidarities and networks of primary ties as centers of moral proximity.

Over the past decade, many studies have provided some understanding on what influences association members‟ decision to attend a meeting; however, more systematic and theoretical research is necessary. The decision making process of attendees is a complicated human behavior practice. The major contribution of this study is adopting the sense of community (SOC) model from psychology to gain a better understanding of the attendee behavior. By doing so, this study will add a theoretical foundation to the existing research in the meeting industry. Also, this study will contribute to the SOC research in psychology by applying the concept to a different setting. This study investigates whether annual conferences build a SOC among association members. First, the SOC of association members at the conference will be analyzed. Second, the influence of SOC on members‟ satisfaction with the conference will be studied. Lastly, the direct and indirect relationship between SOC and future intentions (i.e., return to next meeting, membership renewal, and membership recommendation) will be examined. Data was collected through an intercept survey approach at three annual conferences of national/international associations. The questionnaire consisted of four sections: sense of community, satisfaction with the conference, future intentions, and member profile. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the factor structure and structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships, and Spearman‟s rank order correlation was used to see the strength of the relationship between respondent characteristics and sense of community. The results showed that sense of community was a strong predictor of future iv intentions. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed in the final chapter.

Gamification is a widely explored topic in various contexts. In particular, gamification is used in the form of likes and reactions on various social media. However, it was identified that this reward system in the form of likes led to addictive behavior. On the other side, it was not determined that gamification is significantly explored in the context of the sense of friendliness in online communities. Therefore, this thesis investigates other ways of using gamification to enhance the sense of community and engagement in online communities. This study was conducted with the social media startup COSE. The main goal of the startup is to build inclusive space with attention to users’ time and mental health. Therefore, it’s especially important to investigate not addictive ways of using gamification. The thesis consisted of three parts: primary research, prototyping, and evaluation research. Primary research was conducted in the form of a workshop with a focus group. Qualitative workshop data was analyzed with thematic analysis and an impact/effort matrix. In this thesis, five gamification elements were developed: a COSE interests map to connect users based on their interests, a badge system for rewarding and identifying users, a profile page with elements of gamification, a wizard to reduce anxiety associated with active participation (e.g. publishing content), and a community voting system to give users the ability to influence the community. The evaluation of prototypes was conducted in the form of a controlled withing subject experiment with semi-structured interviews. Finally, it was determined that the COSE interests map, profile page and voting system affected the sense of community. The profile page brought users closer together by reducing anonymity on the platform. Badges, especially secret badges, positively influenced participants’ motivation to explore the platform. Wizard, on the contrary, had no effect on reducing users’ anxiety but it successfully created a friendly environment on the platform. In general, this thesis expanded the traditional quantitative gamification in online communities by proposing qualitative solutions for enhancing the sense of support and friendliness in online communities. / Gamification är ett välutforskat ämne som används inom olika sammanhang, särskilt i form av gilla-markeringar och reaktioner på olika sociala medieplattformar. Det har dock observerats att denna belöningssystematik med gilla-markeringar kan leda till beroendeframkallande beteenden. Samtidigt har det inte i hög utsträckning studerats hur gamification kan användas för att främja en känsla av vänskap och gemenskap inom online-samhällen. Denna uppsats kommer att undersöka alternativa sätt att använda gamification för att stärka gemenskapskänslan och engagemanget i online-samhällen. Studien genomfördes i samarbete med det sociala medieföretaget COSE, vilket har som huvudmål att skapa en inkluderande plats med fokus på användarnas tid och psykiska hälsa. I samband med detta är det särskilt viktigt att undersöka icke beroendeframkallande användningar av gamification. Uppsatsen omfattar tre delar: primärforskning, prototypframtagning och utvärdering av resultatet. Primärforskningen genomfördes i form av en workshop med en fokusgrupp. Den kvalitativa workshopdatan analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys och en påverkan/insats matris. Därefter utvecklades fem olika gamification-element: en COSE-intressekarta för att koppla samman användare baserat på deras intressen, ett märkessystem för att belöna och identifiera användare, en profil-sida med inslag av gamification, en så kallad wizard för att minska ångest i samband med aktivt deltagande (t.ex. publicering av innehåll) samt ett röstsättningssystem som ger användarna möjlighet att påverka gemenskapen. Utvärderingen av prototyperna genomfördes i form av en kontrollerad experimentdesign med semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Slutsatsen är att COSE-intressekartan, profil-sidan och röstsättningssystemet påverkade gemenskapskänslan. Profil-sidan bidrog till att närma användarna genom att minska anonymiteten på plattformen. Märken, särskilt hemliga märken, hade en positiv inverkan på deltagarnas motivation att utforska plattformen. Wizarden hade dock ingen effekt på att minska användarnas ångest, men skapade en vänlig miljö på plattformen. Sammanfattningsvis bidrar uppsatsen till det traditionella kvantitativa förståelsen av gamification i online-samhällen genom att föreslå kvalitativa lösningar för att förbättra känslan av stöd och vänskaplighet i dessa samhällen.

This thesis explores agency in urban refugee spaces and the factors and skills seen to facilitate refugee journeys towards self-reliance in protracted situations. An ethnographic case study was carried out in Kampala, Uganda, where observations and conversations were held with refugee leaders, business owners, and with practitioners at refugee-led organizations. The reasoning is based on Hannah Arendt's notion on what it means to have agency and on wider connections to agency in relation to spaces, storytelling, resilience, and a sense of community. Hermeneutics was applied to the planning and execution of the research, while a narrative approach was adopted to exhibit the findings. The stories presented lay a foundation for proposing a new agency-led approach of how to critically reflect and rethink refugee support in ways that are cost-effective, ethical, and durable over time. This proposed agency-led approach was made by learning from the field and comprises four parts: (i) organizational resilience; (ii) meaningful ownership; (iii) meaningful representation; and (iv) meaningful participation. The new approach is presented to practitioners, potential donors, and those interested in learning how, but also why, we must rethink refugees as actors.

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The purpose of this non-experimental, comparative quantitative study was to determine if there were significant differences between the perceptions of undergraduate and graduate students about the importance and presence of sense of community in online classes at two southern public universities using survey data. The study also aimed to determine if there were significant relationships between students’ perceptions of the presence of sense of community and students’ satisfaction with the course and between students’ perception of the presence of sense of community and students’ perceptions of increases in cognitive learning. The study also addressed factors of undergraduate classification, gender, and format of the class as synchronous, asynchronous, or a combination of synchronous and asynchronous elements. The survey also provided data on how to best create a sense of community in online classes. The findings provide evidence that graduate students had significantly higher scores on the perceptions of the importance and presence of sense of community than undergraduate students. No significant differences were noted based on undergraduate classification, gender, or format of the class. Significant positive relationships were found between the presence of sense of community and students’ satisfaction with the course and between the presence of sense of community and students’ perceptions of increases in cognitive learning. A rank ordering of class activities and practices provided insights on the most effective ways to create a sense of community online. The top five responses were feedback from the instructor, introductions of classmates, synchronous video meetings in large groups of five or more students, instructors’ announcements, and email communication with the instructor. Students’ open-ended responses showed that some students preferred to be independent learners; some found a sense of community in online classes; and some felt isolated but did not find a sense of community. Other comments showed the value of cohorts, social media chat groups, and connections with another student. Students reported mixed reviews about discussion boards, synchronous video meetings, and group work. Students also reported on the critical role of the instructor in creating a sense of community.

Le Sens Communautaire est important pour le bien-être et le développement social positif des adolescents (Pretty, 2002 ; Cicognani et al., 2006; 2012). Cependant, peu d'études ont fourni des informations significatives sur les mécanismes qui peuvent conduire à la construction d'une communauté dans le sport (Warner, 2011). L'objectif de cette thèse est de contribuer à la définition d'une communauté sportive, en examinant les mécanismes sous-jacents à la formation d'un Sens Communautaire dans des contextes sportifs à l'adolescence. Pour cela, un premier chapitre présente une revue de littérature sur le Sens Communautaire et un deuxième chapitre examine la littérature sur le sens communautaire sportif, et la participation sportive à l'adolescence. Par la suite deux axes de recherches sont proposés. Le premier axe comprend deux études qualitatives. Les résultats de ces études ont révélé que la communauté sportive comprend en particulier, les parents, l'entraineur et les pairs sportifs. Il émerge une difficulté pour ces jeunes athlètes à maintenir des relations avec des pairs non sportifs. Le deuxième axe comprend deux études quantitatives. La première étude a porté sur la validation du questionnaire du Sens Communautaire Sportif à l'Adolescence (SCSA), en langue française et italienne. La seconde étude a porté sur la compréhension des processus de ce SCSA en mettant en évidence ses relations avec le climat perçu des parents, de l'entraineur, des pairs non-sportifs, et de l'engagement sportif. Les résultats ont montré qu'à l'adolescence, le SCSA influence de manière significative l'engagement, et que la relation entre le climat perçu des pairs non-sportifs et l'engagement sportif est médié par le SCSA / The Sense of Community is important for the well-being and positive social development of adolescents (Pretty, 2002; Cicognani et al., 2006, 2012). However, a few studies have provided significant information on the mechanisms that can lead to the construction of a community in sport (Warner, 2011). The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the definition of a sport community, examining the mechanisms underlying the formation of Sense Community in sport contexts in adolescence. For this, the first chapter presents a review of literature about Sense of Community and the second chapter examines the literature on the Sense of Community in Sport and sports participation in adolescence. Subsequently two lines of research are proposed. The first line consists of two qualitative studies. The results of these studies revealed that the sport community includes in particular parents, peers and coach sports. There emerges a challenge for these young athletes to maintain relationships with nonathlete peers. The second line comprises two quantitative studies. The first study focused on the validation of the questionnaire Adolescents Sense Community in Sport (SCSA), in French and Italian. The second study focused on understanding the processes of SCSA and its relationship with parents, coach, peer non-athletes climate perceived and sport involvement. The results showed that during adolescence, the SCSA significantly influences the commitment, and the relationship between peer non-athletes climate perceived and sporting commitment is mediated by SCSA