In the past decades technology has changed the way people interact. With the introduction of theInternet, new forms of communication have been developing and changing the ways peoplerelate and create relationships. These new forms of communication provide the users thepossibility to elude time and geographical constraints, therefore allowing them to always beconnected. In recent years new Internet applications known as Social Networking Sites havegained popularity and gained users from all around the globe. They have become an importantplatform to maintain existing relationships, but also to create new ones.This growing interest of people in social networking sites has developed a need, from differenttypes of companies, to create strategies to be noticed in these networks. However, most of, thefew, literature that can be found, is related to how globally known companies’ use these tools,and which benefits and constraints they have found on using them for the organization (van Zyl,2009); and little or no literature can be found on how an entrepreneur uses SNSs for companydevelopment and resource acquisition. In other words, there is a research gap in the literature forunderstanding how entrepreneurs shape their networks in order to gather important resources thatcan help them create, improve and develop their venture. The purpose of this study is to analyzehow entrepreneurs use electronic social networks, as a tool to find acquaintances, create businessrelationships and manage these relationships over time to gain social capital and shape aneffective business-network that can complement or expand their ‘real world’ networks. Based onprevious research and literature three main areas of study, that could be related to traditionalnetworks, were determined: network structure, strength of ties, and development of rapport. Fromthese elements a conceptual framework was developed, on which a comparison of the conceptsfrom traditional networks to electronic was made.Through the use of a qualitative research design and a processual analysis approach, ten semistructuredinterviews were conducted with entrepreneurs who use social networking sites fortheir business, and who could present and identify advantages and disadvantages of using thesesites as a business tool. The data was analyzed through a grounded theory method, where axialcodes were further collapsed or expanded to generate sub- categories and categories that wouldhelp explain the processes being studied. These data, as a result of the analysis, rendered twomodels of understanding; the first one presenting how both networking processes (Face to Faceand Electronic) interrelate with one another to enhance the overall network management, and thesecond suggesting an on-line networking process which can help enable rapport and enhanceinformation flows within an on-line network.

Research about social support and social networks has mostly concerned the impact on a person’s wellbeing and health. However an aspect largely neglected is how social support within the social networks can affect the process of giving up a drug abuse. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of what role the social support within different relationships can have on the process of giving up drug abuse. Furthermore the aim is to examine how a self-help group can provide social support in the transitional period after leaving a drug abuse. The study is based on qualitative interviews with staff and participant from a self-help group. System theory and social network theory has been used to interpret the empirical results. The main result shows that the social support from the social networks are viewed as important by all women. However the social support given to the women from close relationships is not necessarily constructive in the process of rehabilitating from a drug abuse. In addition the result has shown that distrust and inequality in power relationships can lead to lack of support within the professional network. In accordance to earlier tudies, a self-help group can be seen as complementary in the rehabilitation of a drug abuse.

This study explores the factors urban residents consider when making residential location decisions. The context of the study is informal residential areas in a rapidly urbanising African city – the city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. A central concern in the study is how the urban poor make their residential location decisions; the assumption is that with income limitations the urban poor rely on other non-economic resources to enable their residential location decisions in the context of rapid urban growth and urban poverty. The study attempts to question residential location choice concepts that rely on economic approaches as well as question explanations based on the developing world experiences.The study suggests that in the absence of reliable incomes, social networks and informalchannels prevail in the decision-making process. The concept of social capital where networks and social relationships are used as a resource by individuals or groups to achieve goals is explored in a residential choices framework. Demonstrated through in-depth interviews with heads of households settling close to the CBD (termed the inner city), the intermediate informal residential areas and the peri-urban residential areas; the study shows how socio-cultural factors play a role in the decision makingprocess of households. This is illustrated inter alia, in the form of informal channels for information on accommodation and residential plots, being accommodated rent-free by a relative, the actions of subsequently making short-distance moves to a location within proximity of a relative, or seeking people of the same socio-economic status. The context within which the actions have taken place has also been shown to be important in corroborating the network and relationship elements in the concept of social capital. The uncertainty that residents in rapidly urbanizing cities have to deal with on an everyday basis calls for networks and relations as an important resource for survival. The study goes further to suggest how urban planning practice can learn from the social processes. The study is based on qualitative methods such as in-depth interviewing with heads of household and key informants.

In this thesis four empirical studies dealt with children with profound multiple disabilities and their parents with regard to: (a) how parents perceived interaction with their children (b) how observed child/parent interaction was linked to behavior style of the children as perceived by the parents (c) how parents of children with profound multiple disabilities perceived child/parent interaction and behavior style of their children in comparison to parents to children without disabilities matched for communicative ability and age respectively, and, (d) how social networks and family accommodations were linked to child/parent interaction and child behavior style over time for these families according to parental appraisals. The results in study I showed that child/parent interaction occurred through out the day and constituted of mutual experience and joy. There were two processes in interaction: monitoring interaction and successful interaction. Study II found hypo- and hyper dominated behaviour style of the children to influence interaction differently. The parents were found to be experts on their children in monitoring interaction to achieve more frequent periods of successful interaction. Study III found few differences in wishes about ideal interaction between parents of children with profound multiple disabilities and parents of typically developing children. Study IV showed that the children were communicative dependent on their parents; there were few complete overlaps between the children’s and the family’s social networks; and although family accommodations were child-driven, sustainability of family life evolved around other factors. There was a “contradiction” in results for the whole thesis: child/parent interaction occurred through out ordinary everyday life and constituted of mutual experience and joy versus the children’s communicative dependency and the distance found between social networks of families and children and child/parent interaction.

The cereal couture company, [me] & goji, is the dream of three young entrepreneurs. They were the first online company ever to provide the U.S market with customized cereal mix. This case study finds that online companies with an innovative product such as [me] & goji may benefit from using Social Networks as a marketing channel to communicate their Value Proposition. Supported by Roger's Adoption theory, selected theories on, Value Proposition, Social Networks, and qualitative data gathered from, interviews and surveys several findings were made. The conclusion is that despite offering a relatively non complex product, with a high relative advantage the market may have difficulties with recognizing the value of the product. This is mainly due to the fact that products sold online cannot be tried by the customer until after purchase. This may be perceived as an uncertainty factor for some customers. The main benefit with viral marketing tools such as Social Networks is that they may increase the rate of the market adopting new products.

This paper’s chief focus lays in essence, in the examination of what the eventual relevance of the internet has for refugee youth in Sweden, regarding the realisation of a sense of community and participation therein. Rather than acquiring grounds with which to make generalisations feasible, it is an approach towards attaining a better comprehension in understanding the significance of a youth’s views and perceptions, through which ultimately also their internalisation, of the internet as a medium towards eventual capitalisation of the cybersocial potential. However, by ‘sense of community’, this primarily refers to interactional and relational aspects, rather than on premises of eventual membership within forums that may in turn prove to be ’dormant’.

<p>A strong model of culture should capture both the structured and negotiated elements of cultural meaning, allowing for the fluidity of social action and the agency of social actors. Although cultural meanings often reproduce societal structures, supporting stability and consensus, culture is constitutive of and not merely produced by structural arrangements. It is therefore essential to establish clear mechanisms which guide how individuals interpret social events and apply cultural meanings in making sense of the social world. As such, this dissertation focuses on the model of culture forwarded by affect control theory, a sociological theory linking culturally shared meaning with identity, behavior, and emotion in interpersonal interaction (for reviews, see Heise 2007; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2006). </p><p>While many theories have attempted to deal with components of the cultural model separately, affect control theory provides a unifying multi-level framework, which rectifies many shortcomings of earlier models by simultaneously accounting for individual cognition and emotion, situational and institutional context, and cultural meaning. The dissertation begins by introducing affect control theory, which considers cultural meanings to be societally bound, based on consensual and widely shared sentiments, and stable over long periods of time. We advocate several refinements to the theory's assumptions about culture, proposing that cultural sentiments are dynamic and structurally contingent, and that mechanisms operating within social networks serve as important sources of meaning consensus and change.</p><p>The remainder of the dissertation presents empirical evidence in support of our propositions. First, we draw upon primary survey data to show how social position and patterns of social connectedness relate to inculcation into the dominant culture and commonality with the affective meanings of others. Respondents' demographics, social position, social connectedness, network composition, and experiences in close relationships are explored as predictors of inculcation and commonality in meaning. Second, through an experimental study, we explore social influence processes as a mechanism of cultural consensus and change. Analyses examine both conditionally manipulated features of the group structure and respondents' emergent assessments of social influence as predictors of change in task-related attitudes and affective meanings. </p><p>Our results identify structural sources of normative differentiation and consensus, and introduce social networks methodologies as a means of elaborating affect control theory's explanatory model. More broadly, the findings generated by this project contribute to an ongoing academic discussion on the origins of cultural content, exploring the complex and dynamic relationship between patterns of social interaction and cultural affective meaning. We close by introducing research in progress, which examines predictors of clustering in affective meaning and explores how values, self, and identity condition the effects of social influence on decision-making.</p> / Dissertation

The overall aim of the study was to gain some understanding of the lived experience of the care-giving spouses regarding their experiences of the manifestations of the disease, perception of their own health, the possibility of influencing the interpretation of the past, the present and future, outlook on life, surrounding contacts and intimate relationships with their sick partners. The spouses (n=13) of Alzheimer victims were followed with the help of personal interviews, diaries and telephone interviews during a two-years period. The texts was analysed according to a phenomenological-hermeneutic method. The main findings in the study showed that the spouses own health remained quite stable over time. Their perception of the development of their own health seemed to be influenced by how they saw their power to influence their situation, which seemed to be determined by how they interpreted the cause of their health problems.The social network was another important factor for understanding the spouses' experiences. The findings imply that spouses' images of themselves in relation to others were important for their perception of the overall social network. The spouses mostly regarded their relationships positively and their social networks were described as quite stable over time. The spouse's marital relationships, in most cases, seemed to undergo changes with the progress of the disease. Some spouses could maintain feelings of love but mostly the relationships were transformed into ones of tenderness, pity and estrangement. The spouses' valuation of their demented partner was mostly in the form of one of two divergent perspectives. On the one hand, spouses who seemed to perceive their partner as a person separate from the disease, could function as complementary ego aids. On the other hand some spouses were unable to make a distinction between the spouse as a person and the disease.The spouses' experiences regarding their previous relationship with parents, value system, philosophy of life, competence and autonomy seemed to be critical in their experiences of their caring situation. It appears that there is a sub-group of vulnerable carers, as suggested by the concurrence of psychological, physical, and social morbidity, along with deterioration in their marital relationship.The findings are discussed in relation to searching for meaning, the importance of significant others, perceiving and valuing the other, and caring relationships within a life-span perspective. / digitalisering@umu

While there are exemplary studies on the relationships between social networks and media such as television and the Internet, less is known about the social network consequences of mobile phone use during life-stage transitions. This study investigates the roles that mobile phones play in supporting the relationships of young people as they transition to and through their first-year of university in Toronto, Canada. Focussing on information practices during a transition that tests the resilience of support networks, this study queried the extent to which mobile phones play a role in keeping relationships intact, enabling students to maintain a sense of social cohesion and belonging. Data were collected from November 2007 to September 2008 through a longitudinal research design. Socio-technical concepts and network analysis techniques were applied to analyze the ways in which mobile communication is embedded in the everyday social life of young people aged 17-34. Set within the culturally-specific context of urban Canada, the data provided substantial evidence that mobile phones foster social cohesion within intimate relations but provide a more tenuous platform from which to nurture new relationships. First-year undergraduates have integrated the mobile phone into the way they engage with their social networks to a considerable degree, with commuter students experiencing additional tensions in negotiating relationships from home and on-campus. Findings showed that mobile phones were the devices of choice to mitigate feelings of loneliness, with deleterious consequences for the development of new relationships. Furthermore, the mobile phone was a key contributor to a rising sense of empowerment and autonomy for young adults as they negotiated identity transformations during their rite of passage into adulthood. Issues of trust and reciprocity in forming new relationships were mediated through a continuum of social media of which the mobile phone was the most intimate. Evidence of continuous access to social networks has broader implications for how mechanisms for coping with being alone and disconnection are acquired in this generation. Finally, observations of ritualistic interaction practices involving mobile phones may be theorized as small-scale evidence of larger societal shifts from collective constructs of community to that of networked individuals.

This thesis consists of three empirical chapters that examine issues in development economics. Chapter 1 focuses on the effects of civil wars on the welfare of individuals. I use a unique data set that contains information on war casualties of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, and exploit the variation in war intensity and birth cohorts of children, to identify the effects of the war on schooling attainment. I find that cohorts affected by war are less likely to complete secondary schooling, if they resided in municipalities that endured higher levels of war intensity. Ancillary evidence suggests that my estimates are most likely picking up immediate, rather than long-term effects. Furthermore, direct mechanisms such as the destruction of infrastructure and the out-migration of teachers do not seem to matter; instead, the ancillary evidence suggests that youth soldiering may be more important. Chapter 2 studies the impact of the partition which ended the Bosnian War on the post-war provision of public goods at the municipality-level. Comparing trends in the provision of public schooling across partitioned and unpartitioned municipalities during the 1986-2006 period, I find that partitioned municipalities provide 58 percent more primary schools and 37 percent more teachers (per capita). I also find evidence which suggests that convergent preferences - operating via ethnic politics - for ethnically oriented schools may be an important driver of the results, although I cannot rule out the possibility of mechanical explanations. In addition, as the increase in public goods provision may be ethnically oriented, only the ethnic majority profits from this arrangement. Chapter 3 provides an estimation of network effects among rural-urban migrants from Nang Rong, Thailand, by using heterogeneous migration responses to regional rainfall shocks among villagers as exogenous variation affecting network size. I find that social networks significantly reduce the duration of job search, and surprisingly, draw new migrants into the agricultural sector. I argue that this is not because agricultural jobs are more attractive than non-agricultural ones, but rather that my estimates are essentially local average treatment effects that are estimated off agricultural workers who are most affected by rainfall shocks.