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Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / This thesis presents a study of spaza shop businesses in the Delft South township, Cape Town, South Africa. The major goal is to establish whether the advent of foreign run spaza businesses is due to a particular ‘entrepreneurial’ business model underwritten by relatively strong social networks. The study focuses primarily on South African and Somali owned spaza shops as previous research indicates that these are the two major groups of spaza operators in the area. The thesis centres on three core research questions: 1) is there a shift in spaza ownership from South African to Somali shopkeepers in Delft? 2) What are the different spaza business models in operation? 3) What is the significance of social networks or relationships to the success of these business models? The core findings confirm that a major shift has occurred in market share between South African and foreign owned spazas in Delft, with ownership now favouring Somali businessmen, even within the last year. The research shows that this change in ownership is a direct result of the emergence and use of a new, and more sophisticated, ‘entrepreneurial’ business model employed by foreign spaza operators, compared to the more ‘survivalist’ model used by South Africans. This business model is primarily based upon being price competitive and is made possible through collective procurement and distribution. However, an important factor in this success lies in the differential social networks that South African and Somali spaza owners can access to support their business practices in Delft South. Using an anthropologically influenced in-depth ethnographic case study approach, the research operationalises the concept of ‘business models’ by exploring the establishment process (ownership, labour and employment), capital investment, stock procurement, business operation and mobile distribution to spaza shops. The study demonstrates how the socially richer and clan-based social networks of Somali shopkeepers enable a more entrepreneurial business model, whereas South Africans rely on a network limited to the immediate family and approach the spaza business as a supplementary livelihoods strategy. In addition to deepening our understanding of competing business models and the social networks that underwrite them, this research also provides new insights into the significance of spatiality to the spaza economy through the concepts of ‘strongholds’ and ‘neighbourhood economies’; previously unseen forms of spaza related business, principally around the mobile distribution of spaza stock to retailers in Delft South; and the instrumental use of both formality and informality by foreign business people.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This study investigates how students in an online Masters Programme in Adult Learning, although geographically dispersed used SNs to develop a supportive environment that enables collaborative learning to support and deepen their learning. Web 2.0 social software provided the tools for various forms of communication and information sharing amongst student within the social networks. This study shows how the use of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, podcasts, blogs, chat rooms, social networking sites and email have the potential to expand the learning environment, increase participation and enrich the learning experience. Rapid technological developments transform our world into a global society which is ever changing and interconnected. The SNs as a learning environment in this technological driven global society is complex and not clearly defined; therefore it was not easy for me to understand the nature of the SNs as learning environment. The social nature of this study has therefore urged me to use social constructivism as a conceptual framework to gain insights into how students have used the social networks to develop a supportive environment that enables collaborative learning to support and deepen their learning. The utilisation of social constructivism as theoretical lens has helped to broaden my perceptions of the SNs as learning environment, to deepen my understanding of how learning occurs in the SNs and to comprehend learner behaviour within this pedagogical space. Social constructivists view learning as a social process in which people make sense of their world by interacting with other people (Doolittle & Camp, 1999). Social constructivists belief in the social nature of knowledge, and the belief that knowledge is the result of social interaction and language usage, and, thus, is a shared, rather than an individual, experience (Prawat & Floden, 1994). Furthermore, they believe that this social interaction always occurs within a socio-cultural context, resulting in knowledge that is bound to a specific time and place (Vygotsky, 1978).

The purpose of this research is to consider the importance of social relationships and networks within the structures of Information Systems projects. A grounded theory research was conducted making use of project documentation to identify core categories which were supplemented with a survey directed at all levels of project team members. Interpretive patterns from grounded theory enabled inferences to be drawn on the role of social relationships and networks within IS projects. The social and political nature of IS projects requires that social relationships and networks are considered when project teams are created and monitored throughout the project lifecycle since project management philosophies and methodologies are not enough to achieve project success. Social relationships and networks were found to have three impact types on IS projects being a) influence, b) friendships and c) advice. Social relationships and networks were found to impact IS projects in areas of leadership, project culture, social relationships within project teams, the use of external social networks and the managing of external influences. The choice of limiting the research to a single large corporate organisation requires that further research is needed to corroborate the findings in order to make generalisations. The research findings provide practical considerations and highlights potential problems areas in the project lifecycle that need to be taken cognisance of irrespective of the chosen project management methodology. Copyright / Dissertation (MComm (Informatics))--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Informatics / unrestricted

This research proposed a new model for online interpersonal trust based on eight properties of new online social networks. Two elements were found to have significant contributions. These were the ability for users to create an online personal profile where their real identity is disclosed, and the ability to create connections to other online users. The user's innate propensity to trust was also validated as a moderating force on online trust. These results have significant implications for further academic research and online practitioners.Online trust has long been understood as one of the biggest barriers to e-commerce and online business. Various online trust models have been developed and a common theme is the lack of an interpersonal trust component that exists in many real world trust models. Interpersonal trust has been excluded because the internet was considered an impersonal medium. This research argues that the internet has changed to become more personal, and that interpersonal trust is now possible online.The aim of this research was to assist businesses and web designers in understanding drivers of online trust on the new social web. From an academic perspective the aim was to challenge existing online trust knowledge to include interpersonal trust. An online survey was snowball sampled to South African users of Facebook. The survey tested the contribution of eight properties of new online social networks to online trust. The data was analysed using structural equation modelling and the model was found to have a good fit to the data. Further work however is required on the measurement instrument and sampling. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Cette thèse présente une étude sur la mesure des réseaux sociaux en ligne avec un accent particulier sur Twitter qui est l'un des plus grands réseaux sociaux. Twitter utilise exclusivement des liens dirigés entre les comptes. Cela rend le graphe social de Twitter beaucoup plus proche que Facebok du graphe social représentant les communications dans la vie réelle. Par conséquent, la compréhension de la structure du graphe social de Twitter et de la manière dont les informations se propagent dans le graphe est intéressant non seulement pour les informaticiens, mais aussi pour les chercheurs dans d'autres domaines, tels que la sociologie. Cependant, on sait peu de choses sur la propagation de l'information sur Twitter. / This thesis presents the measurement study of Online Social Networks focusing on Twitter. Twitter is one of the largest social networks using exclusively directed links among accounts. This makes the Twitter social graph much closer to the social graph supporting real life communications than, for instance, Facebook. Therefore, understanding the structure of the Twitter social graph and the way information propagates through it is interesting not only for computer scientists, but also for researchers in other fields, such as sociologists. However, littles is known about the information propagation in Twitter. In the first part, we present an in-depth study of the macroscopic structure of the Twitter social graph. In the second part, we study the propagation of the news media articles shared on Twitter. In the third part we present an experimental study of graph sampling.

This thesis explores several issues in the adaptation process of immigrants and their children in Canada. Chapter 2 investigates why second-generation immigrants are better educated than the remaining population. Using a standard human capital framework where individuals choose how much to invest in both their children's and their own human capital, I show that a gap in education can arise in the absence of differences in unobservable characteristics between immigrants and the native born. Rather, it can arise due to institutional factors such as imperfect transferability of foreign human capital and credit constraints. The model's key implication is a negative relationship between parental human capital investments and children's educational attainment, particularly in families with uneducated parents. I find strong empirical evidence of such tradeoffs in human capital investments occurring within immigrant families. Chapter 3 re-assesses the effect of living in an ethnic enclave on labour market outcomes of immigrants. I find evidence of cohort effects in the relationship between mean earnings and the proportion of co-ethnics in the CMA which vary by education level. Next, using information on the proportion of one's friends who share one's ethnicity, I test a common assumption that the enclave effect is a network effect. I find that traditional, geography-based measures of the ethnic enclave effect capture the impact of factor(s) other than social networks. In fact, the two effects generally offset each other to some degree in determining immigrant employment outcomes. Neither measure has a statistically significant effect on average immigrant earnings, at least in cross-sectional data. Chapter 4, co-authored with David Green and Craig Riddell, tests two alternative theories about why immigrants earn less than native-born workers with similar educational attainment and experience - discrimination versus lower skills (measured by literacy test scores). We find that immigrant workers educated abroad have lower cognitive skill levels (assessed in English or French) than similar native-born workers. This skills gap can explain much of the earnings gap. At the same time, foreign-educated immigrants receive no lower returns to skills than the native born. These results offer strong evidence against the discrimination hypothesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Individuals utilise social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to communicate and stay in touch with romantic partners and to maintain relationships. SNSs also play a role in connecting individuals to each other – it enables users to gain a better understanding of the self and to develop meaningful relationships with others. It is used to share personal experiences and is frequently used as a means of social support. Making use of social media can therefore also play a role in coping with relationship dissolution, both at the time of the dissolution and during the post-dissolution stages of the romantic relationship. Lazarus’ Stress and Coping Theory, as well as aspects of Social Interactionist Theory, were utilised as a theoretical framework to conceptualise coping strategies and online behaviour. The aim of the study was to create a detailed description of the role of social media in coping with relationship dissolution. The study was a qualitative, phenomenological study and participants were obtained using purposive and snowball sampling. Unstructured, in-depth interviews were used to collect the data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Based on the findings of the researcher, social media can be both advantageous and disadvantageous in coping with relationships dissolution. Moreover, using social media in order to cope during and after relationship dissolution indicated adaptive coping in the short-term, and maladaptive coping in the long-term. This study has therefore generated an understanding of the role of social media in coping with relationship dissolution.

According to Jensen (2000:215), though we talk of the growing digital divide between rich and poor countries, Africa has shown encouraging signs that it is rapidly adopting the Internet and making innovative use of the technology. Nevertheless, the continent is still well behind other developing regions of the world in taking advantage of the information and communication revolution. The main reasons for this are the limited and expensive telecommunication infrastructure, small markets, and lack of skills and awareness. At the end of 1996, just 11 of Africa’s 54 countries had local Internet access, but by February 2000 all of the continent’s countries had access in the capital cities (Jensen 2000:215). Excluding South Africa, the number of computers permanently connected to the Internet in Africa exceeded 10,000 early in 1999 (Jensen 2000:215). By January 2000, the total had increased to about 25,000, which means Africa, with an estimated population of 780 million people, has about as many Internet-connected computers (hosts) as Latvia, which only has a population of 2.5 million (Jensen 2000:215). Measuring the actual number of Internet users is difficult, but figures for the number of dial-up accounts supplied by Internet service providers (ISPs) show that Africa has more than 500,000 subscribers (Jensen 2000:215). Each computer with an Internet or e-mail connection supports an average of three users, a recent study by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has found (Jensen 2000:215). This puts current estimates of the number of African Internet users at somewhere around 1.5 million. Most are in South Africa with approximately 1 million (Jensen 2000:215). Apart from the widespread use of Internet for business and entertainment purposes, social networking sites are becoming widely popular in South Africa. Although there has been little academic research on social networking sites in South Africa, there have been a few articles on websites, newspapers, and magazines that have touched on this phenomenon. Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, have become very popular among the adult internet user population, as both business and private applications. BMW South Africa, for example, has a Facebook page where video posts of recent car models and photos of cars are placed. The Facebook page also has a link to the company’s website (www.bmw.co.za) on the profile which takes a user straight to the commercial website. FM Tech (www.fmtech.co.za) is technology industry news and opinion website edited by Duncan McLeod, associate editor at the Financial Mail, South Africa’s top-selling and best-read weekly business, technology and current affairs magazine. McLeod’s article, What SA Internet users searched for in 2008, revealed that “Facebook”, “Cape Town” and “games” are the terms that South African Internet users searched for most often in 2008. Farber (2008) suggests that this is according to the results of US Web search giant Google’s annual “Zeitgeist” survey of the top searches worldwide. Farber also includes the year’s list of fastest-rising search terms which showed an enormous interest in international social networking sites. 1.2 Articles from popular media The following four popular articles describe the nature of social networking sites and its influence on South African users. Article 1: Cathryn Reece (2007) wrote an article entitled Facebook fever grips SA. “Cape Town - South Africans have embraced the internet social networking revolution, with over 50 000 new users signing on to the local Facebook network. The Facebook "South Africa" network currently has over 87 000 members - up from 35 000 in May. When a user registers on the site, they are given a blank profile page which they can update with their personal information and are encouraged to join a network. Members can then search the site for their friends and link up to each other, re-creating their social circle on the internet.

Self-efficacy is considered to be a significant variable for enhancing all aspects of human performance (Druckman, 2004). Social support may influence self-efficacy through each of the four channels of self-efficacy information which consist of performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological responses (Bandura, 1997). The primary aim of this study was to explore and describe the nature of change that occurred in selfefficacy and received social support of university-age academy cricketers over the duration of an academy programme. The secondary aim was to explore and describe the relationship between the two constructs, self-efficacy and social support. Sixty-five male, university-age (18-25 years) provincial academy cricketers completed a social support measure and a self-efficacy measure specifically designed for the purposes of this study. These measures were based on Rees and Freeman’s (2007) items and Cox, Martens and Russell’s (2003) revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2 - Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump & Smith, 1990) respectively. The perceived pre- and post-academy personal ratings of self-efficacy and social support, obtained prior to the start of the South African Interprovincial Academy Cricket week, referred to participants’ perceptions before and after attending their respective provincial academies. An inferential pre-experimental post-pretest design was used. The results included significant changes found in self-efficacy, esteem social support, informational social support and tangible social support over the academy season. There were no differences attributed to the length of time a cricketer had spent at the academy or to the cricketer’s highest level of achievement in cricket. The only significant correlation that existed between self-efficacy and social support was the correlation between self-efficacy and x informational social support. This study provided an initial insight into the role of self-efficacy and social support in talented cricketers, especially in a South African context.