published_or_final_version / Journalism and Media Studies Centre / Master / Master of Philosophy

Information technology and social media have been a driving force in the economy and have transformed all aspects of business in recent decades. Understanding social networks is necessary to evaluate their impacts and examine key business issues involving information and technological innovations. The dissertation contains three chapters exploring those issues. In the first chapter, I propose an optimal procurement mechanism for mobile data offloading, covering both technological and business aspects. The unprecedented growth of cellular traffic driven by web surfing, video streaming, and cloud-based services is creating challenges for cellular service providers to fulfill the unmet demand. My present work contributes to the existing literature by developing an analytical model, which considers the unique challenge of integrating the longer range cellular resource and shorter range WiFi hotspots. In the second chapter, I examine the effect of a social network on prediction markets using a controlled laboratory experiment. In prediction markets, people place bets on events that they think are most likely to happen, thus revealing in a sense the nature of their private information. Through a randomized experiment, I show that when the cost of information acquisition is low, a social-network-embedded prediction market outperforms a non-networked prediction market. The third chapter studies different forms of social learning in the context of location-based networks: observational learning and the saliency effect. In recent years, the location-sensing mobile devices offer geographic location capabilities to share users' information about their locations with their friends. In our context, observational learning corresponds to the fact that "check-ins" made by friends help users learn the quality information of a venue; the saliency effect refers to that check-ins lead some of the uninformed consumers to discover a new venue. / text

The present study explored the effect of personality and perceived social support on Facebook use and the effect of Facebook use on ones subjective well-being. Data was collected from 224 Form 1 studentsat two points in time that were three months apart. Results indicated that extraversion and perceived peers social support are significant predictors of Facebook usage for female students. No significant predictors could be found for male students. Furthermore, only number of Facebook friends of female students was found to have significant negative effect on subjective well-being. Problematic Internet use was found to have stronger effect on subjective well-being than Facebook usage. The limitations and future directions of the study are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

While community college transfer students who successfully matriculate into the four-year institution enjoy high persistence and graduation rates, inequities continue to be inherent throughout the process. In order to succeed during this transition, students must employ effective help-seeking strategies that provide them with access to timely and accurate information. This study seeks to be a formal examination of these informational networks. It describes the extensity, composition and positionality of these networks as transfer students exit the community college and enter a large research-extensive university. It also studies the effect that participation in a transfer course has on these informational networks. The results imply that informational networks remain relatively similar throughout the transfer process but that certain populations, including first-generation students and females, are less likely to rely on institutional agents for information. In addition, the effects of a transfer success course appear to be short-term, although it may reap larger benefits for at-risk populations. These findings suggest that socio-academic integration theories are more relevant to community college transfer students than theories based on traditional populations who enter four-year institutions directly out of high school.

This study examined how women with advanced breast cancer manage adverse effects of disease and treatment so that they maintain energy for continued personal development and life quality during what may be a long period of dying. The specific purpose was to test a theory proposing that psychosocial resources mediate between illness related distress and self-transcendent views and behaviors that, in turn, lead to emotional well-being. The study employed a cross-sectional correlational design with a convenience sample (n = 107) of women with Stage IIIb or Stage IV breast cancer. Subjects had lived with advanced disease for a mean length of time of 1.7 years with bone being the most common site of metastases. Subjects completed a questionnaire consisting of 10 instruments indexing symptom distress, functional disability, concurrent distressful life events, financial concerns, perceived personal control, social support, spiritual perspective, self-transcendence, affective well-being and cognitive well-being. Factor analytic structural equations modeling was used for data analysis. There was no relationship between degree of illness distress and available psychosocial resources. Therefore, psychosocial resources did not serve as mediators between illness distress and self-transcendence. Self-transcendence mediated the positive link between psychosocial resources and emotional well-being. Negative paths between illness distress and both self-transcendence and emotional well-being led to a reconceptualization of the theory. An alternative model was analyzed with illness distress as a dependent variable. Self-transcendence continued to mediate between psychosocial resources and emotional well-being. Emotional well-being became a mediator between self-transcendence and decreased illness distress. Psychosocial resources indirectly served to decrease distress through their effect on self-transcendent perspectives and emotional well-being. However, the direct effect of resources was to increase illness distress. Further research is needed to support the reconceptualized theory and to clarify the apparent paradoxical role of psychosocial resources found in this study. Interventions that facilitate self-transcendent perspectives and activities may lead to increased emotional well-being and reduced distress associated with advanced breast cancer.

The social exchange research tradition has examined the effects of structural factors on behavioral and psychological outcomes. Emerson's power-dependence perspective has driven many of these projects, and I follow this line of work. In spite of Emerson's suggestion that changes in the structure of networks should be a focus of investigation, power-dependence research to date has focused exclusively on networks as static, unchanging entities. I extend social exchange theory to consider the effects of structural change on actors within social exchange networks. I predict that dynamic networks and static networks produce different effects on behavioral commitment and on the psychological variables of trust, pleasure and interest. I test these hypotheses using a factorial experimental design. Support for the hypotheses is mixed, and examination of empirical results uncovers some unexpected findings with respect to the exchange behavior of actors in equal-power versus unequal-power networks. Actors in equal-power networks show indifference between potential exchange partners, while actors in unequal-power networks demonstrate unexpectedly high levels of behavioral commitment. Drawing on power-dependence theory, I also generate and test positionally-specific predictions for the psychological variables.

Networks and the relationships embedded in them are critical determinants of how people communicate, form beliefs, and behave. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay have made actions of "strangers" more observable to others. More recently, social media websites such as Facebook and Google Plus have created networks of "friends", and the actions of these friends have become more visible than ever before to consumers. This dissertation develops an analytical model to examine how social learning occurs in different types of networks. Specifically, I examine the pure-strategy perfect Bayesian equilibrium of observational learning in a friend-network vs. a stranger-network. In this model, each individual makes an adopt-or-reject decision about a product after receiving a private signal regarding the underlying quality of the product and observing past actions of other individuals in the network. Grounded on the homophily theory in sociology, the degree of network heterogeneity defines the key difference between a friend-network and a stranger-network. I show a threshold effect of network size regarding which network carries more valuable information: when the network size is small, a friend-network carries more valuable information than a stranger-network does. But when the network size gets larger, a stranger-network dominates a friend-network. This suggests two competing effects of network homogeneity on social learning: individual preference effects and social conforming effects. I also test key implications from theoretical results using experiments to demonstrate internal validity and enhance insights on social learning in networks. I found that experimental results are in line with predictions from the theoretical model.

Social support has been implicated in health outcome through the functions of neuroendocrine responses. One function of body neuroendocrine responses is sleep behavior. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis of a positive relationship between social support and adaptation to sleep in Taiwanese hospitalized adults. Subjects for this descriptive study included 94 Taiwanese hospitalized adults from two hospitals. Of the 94 patients, 30 had social support with the presence of a relative or friend. Subjects were required to have spent two consecutive hospitalized or post-operative nights in order to be included in the study. Data analysis showed an insignificant difference between supported and unsupported groups in terms of disturbance and effectiveness of sleep. It is recommended that more appropriate measurement of social support be used to test the conceptual framework in the future.

This qualitative study explores instrumental aid as social support in family crises. Focus group interviews were conducted with six groups of women to explore their thoughts and feelings about giving and receiving instrumental aid. Women gave many examples of instrumental aid, stating it was important, but only helpful if it met a recognized need. Mutual definition of need appears to be negotiated informally within group or family memberships, as well as more formally using society's manners and customs. Individual and community resources were mentioned frequently. Affirmation of one's perceptions of an event also contributes to definition of a need. Social support is an interactive process; several women gave examples of a "state of shock" following a death and other circumstances that left a person unable to acknowledge aid.

A descriptive study was conducted to examine the relationship between social support and adaptation to sleep by Southern Taiwan hospitalized adults. The conceptual framework for this study was based on Roy's adaptation model and social support as a beneficial factor in health and well-being. Sixty-one hospitalized adults, ages 20 to 71 years, participated in this study. Sixteen subjects (26.2%) had a supportive person stay with them. Data analysis showed that only daytime sleep items of the supplementation factor were significantly different between the supported and unsupported groups. However, all the mean values of effectiveness items in the supported group were higher than those in the unsupported group. It is recommended that a larger sample size from diverse hospitals in Taiwan be used to repeat the study.