This study explores how people with medical concerns seek and perceive social support via Weibo—a social network site in China. The study conducts both a content analysis and an in-depth interview for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of social support on Weibo. Altogether 2548 postings and replies from four Weibo support groups—the Breast Cancer Group, the Arthritis Group, Baby Eczema Group and Children’s Health Group—were categorized into 9 types with a deductive thematic analysis; twenty participants from these four Weibo groups were recruited in the in-depth interview to explore how people seek and perceive social support from Weibo. Weibo stands out as a platform for people to exchange social support for its convenience, multiple functions, and strong ability to connect each other. Though there are some disadvantages of Weibo social support identified by Weibo users, they can, to some extent, be avoided and reduced under appropriate administration.

In the context of public debates about the ‘sexualization’ of ‘tween’ (preteen) girls and their use of social network sites (SNSs), this study explores girls’ online practices, experiences and reflections of their engagement with Facebook. This project is part of a growing body of research that prioritizes talk ‘with’ girls, rather than ‘about’ girls, as a way of contextualizing issues related to their girlhood. I argue that preteen girls’ identities on SNSs can be reimagined as cyborg-subjectivities as girls disrupt binaries through ongoing discursive negotiations of gender and sexuality depending on moment to moment online/offline interactions. Utilizing examples from an online ethnographic observation of eighteen 12-13 year old girls in Christchurch, New Zealand, I discuss how these girls constituted online subject positions through co-constructive relationships with friends. I explore how girls utilized SNS technology to explore and engage with discourses of gender and sexuality. I discuss how girls’ ‘played’ with both conventional and alternative femininities and sexualities in their online photographs and discuss how these images resist classification as ‘sexy/innocent’, ‘children/teens’ and online/offline. This research also reconsiders how identity is understood on SNSs and utilizes a poststructuralist theoretical framework to explore how online identities are embodied and ‘citational’ of shared online/offline subject positions. In addition to ethnographic observation, this research explores girls’ talk and reflections about their Facebook practices through a focus group discussion and a qualitative questionnaire.

Problem discussion – we identified the gap concerning the lack of researches in exploring the impacts of both business and social networks in B2B companies’ internationalization process based on the network model proposed by Johanson and Mattsson (1988), especially taking the Chinese environmental factors into consideration. Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the importance of environmental factors and networks for B2B companies to internationalize into the Chinese market. Methodology – The thesis adopts the abductive approach and employs a qualitative research strategy. In order to obtain relevant information, multiple case study is chosen. The primary data are collected through semi-structured interviews with three Swedish B2B companies. Secondary data such as scientific articles, reports and books are also used in this thesis. Findings – Firstly, this thesis concludes that B2B companies’ business activities in internationalization process in China are influenced by four environmental factors: cultural, legal, economic and political factor. Secondly, business networks have impacts on the process of international extension, penetration and international integration, whereas the impacts of social networks are clearer in the phase of penetration. Thirdly, in China, there is no clear distinction between business- and social networks, but the building of trust is important in developing networks. Besides, B2B companies have to rely on their local employees when utilizing Guanxi in business activities. Managerial Implications – The managers should not only focus on the advantages, but also constantly perceive the risks in the Chinese market. Besides, managers could also take specific advantages of their Chinese employees’ social networks. Furthermore, managers should connect and coordinate the networks in different countries. Finally, managers could rely on their local employees to utilize Guanxi in business interactions. Theoretical Contribution – Firstly, this thesis identifies four key market environmental factors and their impacts for companies’ business activities in the Chinese market. Secondly, this thesis contributes to Johanson and Mattsson’s (1988) network approach by elaborating on the impacts of both business- and social networks in the three phases respectively. Thirdly, this thesis proposes a new conceptualized model that provides a deeper understanding and a clearer demonstration of the importance of environmental factors and networks when firms internationalize into global markets. Limitations – The results of this thesis might be limited to generalize to all kinds of market segments or industries. Moreover, in this thesis, the impacts of social networks are only identified in the phase of penetration. Keywords - Internationalization process, B2B companies, Environmental factor, Business network, Social network, Network approach, Impacts of network, the Chinese market

Collaborative groups are important both in the learning environment of engineering education and, in the real world, the business of engineering design. Selecting appropriate individuals to form an effective group and monitoring a group’s progress are important aspects of successful task performance. This exploratory study looked at using the concepts of cognitive social structures, structural balance, and centrality from social network analysis as well as the measures of emotional intelligence. The concepts were used to analyze potential team members to examine if an individual's ability to perceive emotion in others and the self and to use, understand, and manage those emotions are a factor in a group’s performance. The students from a capstone design course in computer engineering were used as volunteer subjects. They were formed into groups and assigned a design exercise to determine whether and which of the above mentioned tools would be effective in both selecting teams and predicting the quality of the resultant design. The results were inconclusive with the exception of an individual's ability to accurately perceive emotions. The instruments that were successful were the Self-Monitoring scale and the accuracy scores derived from cognitive social structures and Level IV of network levels of analysis.

This research presents a structural model of the effect of the organization of military units upon their capability. This research is oriented towards a more complete understanding of military capability and policy decisions about the structure and development of military forces. We identify the types of national and military policy decisions that claims of military capability inform, and find that there are five distinct types of capability claims relevant to military policy. We show how these types of capability claims are logically related to each other, but have different premises, predicates, and standards of proof. We find that one of these types of claims, General Organization Capability Claims, ties together the various military policy decisions. The remainder of this research shows how these capability claims can be formally structured based on military doctrine and structurally evaluated using a network-science based model. The interaction between the structural elements of a military organization (personnel, materiel, and information) and the things it is supposed to do (military tasks) can be represented and analyzed with network science methods, and represents a type of general organization capability claim. We present a method for representing policy decisions about unit structure and tactical doctrine. We then develop two versions of a structural model of capability–one that links the individual elements of an organization to the tasks it performs; another that considers the capacity of a set of organizations to meet a set of requirements. We show that network statistics of organizations represented off of authoritative, rather than observational, data are still consistent with network science findings but require interpretation. We also show how alternate methods of aggregating organizations can expand the utility of the capability measurement. This research presents five new contributions to the fields of military policy analysis and network science–(1) a taxonomy of military capability claims, (2) a meta-network model of doctrinal organization and task data, (3) a structural model of organization capability, (4) a structural model of organization capacity, and (5) a network-based method integer programming method.

The thesis examines the economic integration process of refugees in rural Sweden, and its relation to geographical mobility. The mechanisms behind the integration process are explored through the concepts of networks, social bridge, and scalar. It is concluded that having a function that plays the role of a social bridge within networks positively affect the economic integration process for refugees. Factors that provide fundamental conditions for the function of a social bridge is identified to be cultural understanding and trustworthiness. The thesis highlights the spatial aspects of the case study area by considering networks between different scalar of global, national, and local. Through analyzing the positioning of the locality, relations are found with characteristics of refugees coming to the place. Those refugees mismatch with the local labor demand, yet they have positive impacts on the location in terms of a demographic aspect and internationalization opportunities. Under this condition, a social bridge is understood to be vital for overcoming the gap between the labor demands and a welcoming attitude toward refugees. As social bridge fosters interactions between refugees and society, it also has a positive effect on refugees’ mobility and attitude toward a place. Interaction opportunities provide a base for a new identity formation for refugees, which is essential to generate a sense of home. Feeling the place to be one’s home contributes to refugees staying. A critical realistic approach has been chosen as the way of studying integration process. By means of statistical data, employment patterns are explored in this area. A semistructured interview study was used to analyze the networks in depth.

Syftet med denna undersökningen är att genom det sociologiska perspektivet symbolisk interaktionism, undersöka hur användare av det sociala nätverket Instagram upplever aktiviteten som ett meningsfullt inslag i sin vardag. För att uppnå syftet utformades följande frågeställningar: På vilket sätt upplevs aktiviteten på Instagram som meningsfull? Vilka normer och förväntningar uppstår i aktiviteten? Hur anpassas aktiviteten efter dessa normer och förväntningar? Metod: Kvalitativ metod där användare av Instagram har intervjuats angående sina subjektiva uppfattningar om aktivitetens meningsfullhet. Intervjusvaren analyserades därefter genom det sociologiska perspektivet symbolisk interaktionism, med betoning på Erving Goffmans bidrag till detta. Resultat: Intervjupersonerna upplever aktiviteten på Instagram som meningsfull då det ger dem bekräftelse och skapar en känsla av gemenskap. I aktiviteten på Instagram skapas vidare en förväntan om att uttrycken ska vara roliga, kreativa och inspirerande, vilket innebär att uttryck som inte uppfyller detta sållas bort. Intervjupersonerna anpassar således ständigt sin aktivitet i strävan efter bekräftelse. Slutsats: Instagram är ett meningsfullt inslag i vardagen då aktiviteten uppfyller flera, grundläggande mänskliga behov. Detta sker dock inte villkorslöst, då man som användare behöver leva upp till de normer och förväntningar som skapas i aktiviteten för att uppleva denna som meningsfull. / The aim of this study is that by the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism, investigate how users of the social network Instagram is experiencing activity therein as a meaningful element in their everyday lives. The questions asked were: In what way is activity on Instagram perceived as meaningful ? Which standards and expectations develop through the activity? How does the activity adapt to these standards and expectations ? Methods: Qualitative methods in which users of Instagram has been interviewed about their subjective perceptions of the meaning of the activity. Interview responses were then analyzed through the symbolic interactionism perspective, with emphasis on Erving Goffman's contribution to this. Results: The interviewees perceive the activity on Instagram as meaningful as it gives them confirmation and creates a sense of community. Activity on Instagram is expected to be fun, creative and inspiring, which means that expressions that do not meet these requirements are screened out. The interviewees are constantly adapting their activity to that expectation in their quest for confirmation. Conclusion: Instagram is a meaningful part of daily life as the activity meets several basic human needs. However, this is not unconditional, as the users need to live up to the standards and expectations that are created in the activity in order to experience this as meaningful.

Girl gamers, while a substantial part of the gaming population, are often largely ignored in both the gaming industry and academic literature. In particular, there have been few investigations to date on what comprises the identity of a girl gamer, particularly outside the context of gameplay. To that end, the current study aims to investigate how girl gamers enact their identities as girl gamers on Twitter, a social network site. Eight Twitter accounts whose users self-identified as either Gamer Girls or Girl Gamers on a Twitter user directory where identified and the profiles and tweets of each collected for a two week period. This data was then analyzed according to Hecht’s communication theory of identity in order to determine how girl gamers enact their identity in an online context.

Fueled by ubiquitous access to mobile phones, and a massive population of nearly 3 billion unbanked people around the globe, mobile commerce is evolving as a disruptive technology. Simultaneously, mobile payments are surfacing as a killer application within the mobile commerce context (Hu et al. 2008). Undeniably, the proliferation of wireless mobile technology provides much-needed access to vital information, and financial services for disenfranchised, unbanked populations. In addition, technological innovations offer first-time opportunities for suppliers of goods and services in a market context to gain competitive advantages while enhancing their economic viability. According to Portio Research, the volume of mobile payments rose significantly from $68.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2009, with predictions of $633.4 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2014 (mobithinking.com 2012). Despite exponential growth in the number of mobile subscribers globally, and widespread adoption of mobile commerce, acceptance rates for mobile payment applications have lagged (Dahlberg et al. 2007, Ondrus et al 2009, Ondrus and Lyytinen 2011). Yet examinations of factors inhibiting the widespread acceptance of mobile payments are relatively sparse. Using Social Network theory, this research examines factors affecting engagement in mobile payments. The researcher posits that four primary elements influence mobile payment engagement: 1) the relationships between and amongst inter-organizational alliance members; 2) the prevailing regulatory environment; 3) the state of existing banking and technology infrastructures, and 4) an assessment of economic opportunity. The research outcomes from this exploratory examination led to the development of a comprehensive model for mobile payment engagement, and strongly suggest that ties between and amongst firms in inter-organizational alliances help ensure the success of mobile payment engagement. Support was found for the following suppositions: 1) similarities and relations (continuous ties) help establish a framework and understanding amongst alliance members as to each party’s goals and objectives; and 2) interactions and flows (discrete ties) between and amongst inter-organizational alliance members strengthen the overall ties between alliance members while solidifying a viable working relationship amongst the alliance members. This study employs a qualitative approach to obtain real world insight into the dynamism of the mobile payment arena. A model is then proposed to practically examine mobile payment engagement opportunities. From a theoretical perspective, the research contributes to the extant scholarly knowledgebase pertaining to engagement in mobile payments.

Low-rank matrix factorizations have become increasingly popular to project high dimensional data into latent spaces with small dimensions in order to obtain better understandings of the data and thus more accurate predictions. In particular, they have been widely applied to important applications such as collaborative filtering and social network analysis. In this thesis, I investigate the applications and extensions of the ideas of the low-rank matrix factorization to solve several practically important problems arise from collaborative filtering and social network analysis. A key challenge in recommendation system research is how to effectively profile new users, a problem generally known as \emph{cold-start} recommendation. In the first part of this work, we extend the low-rank matrix factorization by allowing the latent factors to have more complex structures --- decision trees to solve the problem of cold-start recommendations. In particular, we present \emph{functional matrix factorization} (fMF), a novel cold-start recommendation method that solves the problem of adaptive interview construction based on low-rank matrix factorizations. The second part of this work considers the efficiency problem of making recommendations in the context of large user and item spaces. Specifically, we address the problem through learning binary codes for collaborative filtering, which can be viewed as restricting the latent factors in low-rank matrix factorizations to be binary vectors that represent the binary codes for both users and items. In the third part of this work, we investigate the applications of low-rank matrix factorizations in the context of social network analysis. Specifically, we propose a convex optimization approach to discover the hidden network of social influence with low-rank and sparse structure by modeling the recurrent events at different individuals as multi-dimensional Hawkes processes, emphasizing the mutual-excitation nature of the dynamics of event occurrences. The proposed framework combines the estimation of mutually exciting process and the low-rank matrix factorization in a principled manner. In the fourth part of this work, we estimate the triggering kernels for the Hawkes process. In particular, we focus on estimating the triggering kernels from an infinite dimensional functional space with the Euler Lagrange equation, which can be viewed as applying the idea of low-rank factorizations in the functional space.