Friendship Networks Research Articles

Dense Networks With Mixture Degree Distribution

Complex networks have become a powerful tool to describe the structure and evolution in a large quantity of real networks in the past few years, such as friendship networks, metabolic networks, protein–protein interaction networks, and software networks. While a variety of complex networks have been published, dense networks sharing remarkable structural properties, such as the scale-free feature, are seldom reported. Here, our goal is to construct a class of dense networks. Then, we discover that our networks follow the mixture degree distribution; that is, there is a critical point above which the cumulative degree distribution has a power-law form and below which the exponential distribution is observed. Next, we also prove the networks proposed to show the small-world property. Finally, we study random walks on our networks with a trap fixed at a vertex with the highest degree and find that the closed form for the mean first-passage time increases logarithmically with the number of vertices of our networks.

COVID-19 and Small-Scale Fisheries in Southeast Asia: Impacts and Responses

This paper describes the impacts of and responses to COVID-19 of small-scale fisheries in six selected countries in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The paper used a structured case study approach to analyse the impacts and responses and relied heavily on existing reports and data sources in each country. The pandemic has further revealed the vulnerability of small-scale fishing households in the region. Given the few assets of fisher households, their ability to cushion the negative impact of crises and shocks is limited. Fishers made adaptive responses such as direct fish marketing, online marketing, and home delivery services. While short-term responses of providing food and financial assistance have been helpful, long-term support to address pandemics such as COVID-19 and other stressors will require developing more resilient fishing households. The paper recommends several approaches and interventions to improve household resilience and to be better prepared for similar challenges and threats in the future. These include: i) strengthening the fishing households’ social network of friends, relatives, and neighbours to serve as both a social safety net and a bridge towards the transition to financial inclusion; ii) diversifying livelihood to reduce dependency on the fishery and provide for additional sources of income and food; iii) promoting financial inclusion through savings, credit, digital payment products, and insurance; iv) value chain upgrading through post-harvest fish handling and processing methods; and, v) providing access, especially for women, to social protection measures such as government health insurance and social security.

Children's Independent Mobility and Physical Activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study with Families.

Children’s independent mobility (CIM) is the freedom of children to move around their neighbourhood without adult supervision and is closely related to overall physical activity participation. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted movement behaviours for children, with evidence indicating a decrease in physical activity. The aim of this study was to explore experiences of CIM and physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspectives of children and their parents. We completed 21 family (at least one parent and one child aged 7–12) semi-structured interviews with 45 participants living in small urban and rural areas of British Columbia, Canada. Three themes were identified through a reflexive thematic analysis: (1) keeping everyone safe from COVID-19; (2) change in pattern and types of activity; (3) social impacts with family, friends, and community. Participants expressed a perceived increase in unstructured activity and a decrease in structured physical activity during the pandemic, which many parents viewed as a positive change. Parents and children indicated negative feelings due to spending less time with peers and reflected positively about spending more time with family. Parents and children expressed fear and anxiety in trying to keep their families safe from virus spread and creativity in adapting play behaviours. Findings highlight the impact of the pandemic on social friendship networks for families and a shift in activity patterns for children toward unstructured play.

‘The wish to paint’: Bowen and the Visual Arts

Throughout her life, Elizabeth Bowen maintained a rich network of artist friends and acquaintances. She often attended exhibitions and was an astute, sometimes caustic critic in letters as well as reviews. Her short tenure as an art student is an often mentioned but rarely, if ever, explored biographical fact, yet it was a key moment in her creative development. It is perhaps unsurprising then that she began to write while ‘still under the influence of … the wish to paint.’ This essay considers Bowen's significant relationship with the visual arts, from her art training and networks to her critical engagement and deeply visual prose. In childhood, Bowen was taught to paint by Elizabeth Yeats and forged a lasting friendship with Mainie Jellett, one of Ireland's great modernists. In 1918, Bowen enrolled at the LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts but, convinced she lacked the requisite artistic talent, she withdrew from her studies after only two terms. This sense of failure plunged her into an artistic crisis from which writing offered a creative way forward. Tellingly, Bowen later reflected that her earliest stories ‘had the character of a last hope’. In describing the best of her writing as ‘verbal painting’, Bowen offers us a lens through which to conceptualise the dynamic dialogue between her more experimental prose and visual modernism. Drawing together aspects of her artistic formation, milieu, and taste, this essay ultimately seeks to provide a series of layered contexts to enrich our understanding of Bowen's fictions, including The Last September (1929) and To the North (1932).

Effects of Friendship among Same-Sex Attracted Youth on Sexual Minority Identity Development in Young Adulthood

ABSTRACT Using data from Waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this study investigated the interactive impact of adolescent friendship network characteristics and same-sex attraction (SSA) on the development of sexual minority (SM) identity in young adulthood. Results indicate that SSA youth who identified a best friend that also identified them as their best friend were 5.3 times more likely to identify as a SM compared to those who did not experience reciprocity. For each additional classmate who listed them as a friend, SSA youth were 1.2 times more likely to identify as a SM. Increased centrality in friendship network increased the likelihood that SSA youth would identify as a SM by 1.8 times. Sex-stratified results reveal that particular network characteristics impact boys and girls differently. These findings point to the importance of further investigating relationships between friendship characteristics and identity formation among adolescents.

In-Group Bias or Out-Group Reluctance? The Interplay of Gender and Religion in Creating Religious Friendship Segregation among Muslim Youth

Abstract Even in diverse schools that provide opportunities for interreligious friendships, Muslim youth disproportionally tend to be friends with Muslims rather than non-Muslims. Echoing broader debates about minorities’ self-segregation versus exclusion by majority group members, a key question is whether religious friendship segregation arises because of Muslims’ in-group bias or because of non-Muslims’ reluctance to befriend them. We suggest that the answer differs for Muslim boys and girls. Building on research on interreligious romantic relations and accounts of the lives of young Muslims and other ethno-religious minorities in Western societies, we propose that religious in-group bias is stronger for Muslim girls than for Muslim boys. Conversely, we expect non-Muslim youth to be more open to befriend Muslim girls than Muslim boys. Applying stochastic actor-oriented models of network dynamics to large-scale longitudinal data of friendship networks in German schools, we find that Muslim girls indeed have a strong in-group bias, whereas non-Muslim youth are not reluctant to be friends with them. Muslim boys, by contrast, have a much weaker in-group bias, but non-Muslim youth are less willing to be friends with them rather than with non-Muslims. A simulation analysis demonstrates that these gendered individual-level processes result in comparable aggregate patterns of friendship segregation among Muslim boys and girls. Religious friendship segregation thus arises because Muslim girls tend to self-segregate and non-Muslim youth are less willing to befriend Muslim boys although the latter are open to interreligious friendships. This gendered friendship-making behavior has implications for the larger question of minority social integration.

Networks of friends and foes and the fate of tree seedlings.

This article is a Commentary on Liang et al., 230: 2061–2071.

Gender differences in social interactions

We study how the random assignment of new students to introductory-week groups shapes subsequent friendship networks. Both women and men report being much more likely to be friends with same-gender students with whom they were (randomly) assigned in a group during their first week on campus, and the effect is much stronger for women. When students from the same cohort play a repeated trust game in the experimental laboratory, their behavior helps explain what we observed in the field. Women display more stability and less flexibility than men in their interactions with individuals with whom they had previously played. This difference is enough to generate homophily in the observational data even though subjects show no intrinsic preference for same-gender interaction.

Is America coming apart? Socioeconomic segregation in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and social networks, 1970–2020

AbstractAs income inequality in the United States has reached an all‐time high, commentators from across the political spectrum warn about the social implications of these economic changes. America, they fear, is “coming apart” as the gap between the rich and poor grows into a fault line. This paper provides a comprehensive review of empirical scholarship in sociology, education, demography, and economics in order to address the question: How have five decades of growing economic inequality shaped America's social landscape? We find that growing levels of income inequality have been accompanied by increasing socioeconomic segregation across (1) friendship networks and romantic partners, (2) residential neighborhoods, (3) K‐12 and university education, and (4) workplaces and the labor market. The trends documented in this review give substance to commentators' concerns: compared to the 1970s, rich and poor Americans today are less likely to know one another and to share the same social spaces. The United States is a nation divided.

Self-rated Changes of Health Status during Stay-at-home Orders among Older Adults Using the Long-term Care Insurance System of Japan: A Cross-sectional Study.

To reveal self-rated changes of health status during stay-at-home orders among older adults and to verify whether decrease in frequency of going outdoors during these orders was related to self-rated changes in health status. A self-completed questionnaire for older adults was provided in 2 dayservice facilities and a nursing station. We operationally defined health status with 4 domains (motor function, oral and swallowing function, depression, and social networks) and designed the questionnaire to determine self-rated changes in health status using factor analysis. After factor analysis, regression analyses were conducted. Dependent variable was each factor score (self-rated changes of health status), and independent variable was decrease in frequency of going outdoors. Approximately 80% of participants answered that their health status had "worsened" in motor function (75.0%-87.2%). Moreover, more than 70% of participants answered "worsened" in "Feeling energy" and "Getting together and speaking with friends" (72.3% and 75.7%, respectively). Regression analyses demonstrated that, after adjusting for covariates, the decrease in frequency of going outdoors was related to self-rated changes of motor function and friend network. During stay-at-home orders, older adults felt deterioration in their motor function, in feeling energy, and in their friend network, especially people who had decreased their frequency of going outdoors felt more deterioration in their motor function and in their friend network.

Sex Differences in Play Networks and Self-Reported Physical Activity Among Children at Summer Care Programs

This study examined sex differences in child friendship networks relative to summer care programs and associations with self-reported physical activity (PA) across summer. Children (n = 182; mean age = 9.93 years; SD = 1.28) at two summer care programs reported PA and information about up to five people they hung around with at the program and five outside the program at the beginning and end of summer. Male children reported significantly more PA than females at both timepoints. Average PA of in-program friends was significantly associated with PA for both sexes. More studies should acknowledge access to summer care programming when assessing summertime PA.

Learning goals mitigate identity threat for Black individuals in threatening interracial interactions.

Interactions between members of different racial and ethnic groups are often stressful. These interactions are stressful, in part, because they contribute to social identity threat-the fear of being judged or treated negatively based on one's social group membership. Previous work separately suggests that the diversity of an interaction partner's friendship network and the goals that people set for themselves influence social identity threat. Bringing these two bodies of work together, the present research examines whether adopting a learning (vs. performance) goal mitigates identity threat for Black people anticipating an interaction with a White partner who had a racially homogenous (vs. diverse) friendship network (a context previously shown to arouse identity threat). Two experimental studies (N = 310) were conducted. Black adults (Mage = 29.66, 64% women) primed with either a performance or learning goal anticipated an interaction with a White partner who had either a racially diverse (Study 1) or racially homogenous (Studies 1 and 2) friendship network. After, we assessed participants' social identity threat and anticipated interaction experiences. Black adults primed with learning (vs. performance) goals expected to be perceived more positively by their interaction partner and expected to have more positive interaction experiences when they anticipated an interaction with a White partner who had a racially homogenous network of friends. These findings suggest that learning goals can mitigate threat among Black individuals within an otherwise identity-threatening interaction context, thus opening the door for positive interracial contact in the future even in the context of challenging interracial interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Online Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the United Kingdom

We explore the implications of online social endorsement for the Covid-19 vaccination program in the United Kingdom. Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing problem, but it has assumed great urgency due to the pandemic. By early 2021, the United Kingdom had the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality per million of population. Our survey of a nationally representative sample of UK adults ( N = 5,114) measured socio-demographics, social and political attitudes, media diet for getting news about Covid-19, and intention to use social media and personal messaging apps to encourage or discourage vaccination against Covid-19. Cluster analysis identified six distinct media diet groups: news avoiders, mainstream/official news samplers, super seekers, omnivores, the social media dependent, and the TV dependent. We assessed whether these media diets, together with key attitudes, including Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy mentality, and the news-finds-me attitude (meaning giving less priority to active monitoring of news and relying more on one’s online networks of friends for information), predict the intention to encourage or discourage vaccination. Overall, super-seeker and omnivorous media diets are more likely than other media diets to be associated with the online encouragement of vaccination. Combinations of (a) news avoidance and high levels of the news-finds-me attitude and (b) social media dependence and high levels of conspiracy mentality are most likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination. In the direct statistical model, a TV-dependent media diet is more likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination, but the moderation model shows that a TV-dependent diet most strongly attenuates the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and discouraging vaccination. Our findings support public health communication based on four main methods. First, direct contact, through the post, workplace, or community structures, and through phone counseling via local health services, could reach the news avoiders. Second, TV public information advertisements should point to authoritative information sources, such as National Health Service (NHS) and other public health websites, which should then feature clear and simple ways for people to share material among their online social networks. Third, informative social media campaigns will provide super seekers with good resources to share, while also encouraging the social media dependent to browse away from social media platforms and visit reliable and authoritative online sources. Fourth, social media companies should expand and intensify their removal of vaccine disinformation and anti-vax accounts, and such efforts should be monitored by well-resourced, independent organizations.

Crowding-out or crowding-in? Effects of LEAP 1000 unconditional cash transfer program on household and community support among women in rural Ghana

Abstract Social protection programs are not introduced in a vacuum and it is important to understand what effects such programs have on existing informal support networks of family, friends and community members. A social cash transfer may reduce receipt of informal financial support, which can water down part of the program’s impact. However, cash transfers can also reduce barriers to social participation and enable participants to engage in reciprocal support systems. We use data from the quasi-experimental mixed method impact evaluation of Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) 1000 program, a social cash transfer program for pregnant women and mothers of children under one year living in poverty, to estimate program effects on social support and participation. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that LEAP 1000 increases overall social support, as well as both emotional and instrumental support. In addition, program beneficiaries are more likely to participate in community groups. In in-depth interviews, participants confirmed increased support with descriptions of improved access to financial markets, such as borrowing money or contributing to local savings schemes, and strengthening of social participation in local groups and gatherings. Beneficiary women also highlighted reduced need for economic support and new opportunities to support others. By creating opportunities for additional social support within the household and community, LEAP 1000 crowded-in support, rather than reducing existing sources of support or crowding-out support.

Friendship and Consumption Networks in Adolescents and Their Relationship to Stress and Cannabis Use Intention.

Background: Cannabis is an illegal psychoactive substance that’s use is widespread among adolescents. During adolescence, many changes can cause stress. In this phase, the group of friends becomes increasingly important, being a situation of vulnerability for the beginning of cannabis use, either as an escape mechanism or due to peer’s influence. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the structure of the consumption and friendship network, the intention to use cannabis, and the stress in a secondary school class. Methods: An online platform with validated self-reported questionnaires were used for data collection. Results: The sample consisted of adolescents (n = 20) aged 14–16 from a third-year class of compulsory secondary education in Ponferrada (León, Spain). Significant differences were obtained concerning consumption intention and the different network metrics in both the friendship and consumption networks. Subsequently, the representation of these networks was carried out. Conclusions: Social Network Analysis is a very useful tool that provides a picture of the context in which adolescents are located. In the consumption network, there are central actors who have not yet consumed cannabis; this is a crucial moment to implement prevention strategies.

Integrating family, friendship and business networks in family firms

PurposeThis paper considers the multiple social networks of small family businesses and the dynamic interactions between them. It analyses family, friendship and business networks and the way additional ties within the networks become visible when they are considered together rather than separately.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews of thirteen family-owned and managed businesses are used to establish the patterns of networking. A detailed case study is then presented, allowing a deeper qualitative analysis of the interaction of different types of networks.FindingsThe findings explore multiple rationalities employed in the networking of family businesses and how different aspects of their individual family, friendship and business networks contribute to business development.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper suggests that a multi-rational theoretical perspective of the family, rather than a solely business-related perspective, deepens the understanding of the dynamics of family businesses behavior and that different types of businesses may be influenced to varying degrees by different rationalities.Practical implicationsBusiness networking tends to be deliberately encouraged by business support agencies, often via the deliberate development of events. A deeper understanding of the manner in which small businesses use and develop networks would enhance the direction and effectiveness of such investment.Social implicationsFamily businesses, especially micro- small- and SME businesses, are often integral to the communities in which they are based. By viewing family businesses within their social space, we acknowledge the importance of the community around them and the integrated nature of family, business and community in rural areas.Originality/valueThe value of this research lies in the proposition that smaller businesses in rural areas are often surrounded by the inter-woven networks of family, business and community.

The role of prosocial attitudes and academic achievement in peer networks in higher education

After the transition to university, students need to build a new peer network, which helps them to adapt to university life. This study investigated to what extent students’ prosocial attitudes and academic achievement facilitate the embeddedness in friendship and help-seeking networks, while taking structural network characteristics into account. Participants were 95 first-year bachelor’s degree students and were part of learning communities consisting of 12 students at a university in the Netherlands. Measures included student-reports of prosocial attitudes, peer nominations of friendship and help-seeking networks, and officially registered grades (GPA). Longitudinal social network analysis, stochastic actor-based modeling with the package RSiena, revealed that both students’ own prosocial attitudes and achievement played a role in their friendship formation, whereas only students’ own achievement made the formation of their help-seeking relationships more likely. When students were friends, it was more likely that they approached each other for help and vice versa. Similarity in achievement level contributed to relationship formation in friendship and help-seeking networks. Overall, the results underscore the importance of both student’ prosocial attitudes and achievement for their social adjustment (i.e., making friends) and only achievement for their academic adjustment (i.e., seeking help) during the first year of university within the context of small-scale teaching.

Peran Pola Asuh terhadap Penggunaan Gadget pada Anak Usia 10 Tahun di RW 02 Desa Mlekang

This research investigated the role of parenting to the use of gadgets for children aged 10 years in hamlet 02 of Mlekang Village. Based on the results of interviews by the head of hamlet 02 of Mlekang Village, it was found that the results of data on parents of children aged 10 years on average work as traders, farmers and factory workers. This would be research material on how the form of parenting is seen from different family backgrounds. The researcher purpose to analyze the role of parenting applied by parents to the use of gadgets in children in hamlet 02 of Mlekang Village. The researcher used a qualitative descriptive method. This research was carried out in Mlekang Village, Gajah District, Demak Regency, by taking the subject of 10 students' parents and 10 children as research subjects consisting of 4 boys and 6 girls. This research used data collection techniques including the stages of observation, in-depth interviews, documentation, and recording. The data were analyzed using data reduction, data presentation, and drawing concluding. The results of the research showed that in providing a form of parenting students hamlet 02 of Mlekang Village used a form of democratic parenting. The form of democratic parenting has a positive impact on the use of students’ gadgets such as knowledge, expands friendship networks, and facilitates communication. There was also a suggestion in this study that parents are expected to be able to assist and share sufficient time with their students and parents should provide good parenting for their children because they can provide good role models.

Oppositional culture revisited. Friendship dynamics and the creation of social capital among Turkish minority adolescents in Germany

ABSTRACT Ethnic differences in the endowment with social capital can exacerbate intergroup inequalities. Pursuing this argument, we first compare the educational compositions of friendship networks between Turkish minority and native majority adolescents in Germany. Second, we pick up notions from Oppositional Culture Theory (OCT) to examine how ethnic differences in the composition of friendship networks come about. In a sample of 2,419 students in 74 secondary schools, we focus on the effort, achievement, and anti-school behaviour of peers and the role these play in adolescents’ friendship selection. Results from multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models reveal that Turkish minority adolescents prefer highly engaged and high-achieving peers as friends. Despite these preferences, Turkish minority adolescents’ social networks still provide lower levels of social capital on aggregate than majority members’ networks. We attribute this to systematic variation in the opportunity structure. Our results speak against the existence of anti-school norms among Turkish minority youth. Still, our study supports the OCT’s notion that an ethnic group’s structural positioning within society can result in selective acculturation processes and distinct patterns of social embeddedness.

Ripple effects of borrower’s default decisions on P2P markets

Default is the most critical concern in any financial market. We study the ripple effects of borrower’s default behavior in online peer-to-peer lending with a longitudinal and comprehensive dataset consisting of 347,752 loan listings. Previous studies researched several variables that determine the default risk. We examine how both online and offline friendship networks affect borrower’s default behaviors. We found the borrowers are significantly impacted by the default behaviors of their social networks. The borrowers who have defaulter friends are twice likely to default than the borrowers who do not have. Nevertheless, not all friend types have equal influences. The impact is stronger for online friends while much weaker for offline friends. We further explain that default records could harm a person’s social image and cause social stigma costs. This study is one of the first to investigate the default decision-making in online financial market. It has significant theoretical and practical contributions to grasp the borrower’s default behaviors and further diminish default risk to stabilize the financial market.