Structural Characteristics Of Social Networks Research Articles

Crime variability, peer effects, and economic inequality in social networks

A large fraction of the variance in aggregate crime rates cannot be explained by observable socioeconomic conditions. Social determinants of crime may drive the unexplained variation, but economic models of social influence so far emphasize the intensity of criminal effort, not the decision of whether to participate in crime. This article develops a model of criminal participation as a supermodular game, based on the theory of differential association. Simulations relate the structural characteristics of social networks to supportable patterns of crime in equilibrium. Denser and more unevenly connected networks show wider variation in aggregate crimes, but wage inequality in the formal sector reduces the variance. Additionally, average crimes rates are a single-peaked function of wage inequality. This feature suggests future cross-sectional studies of crime rates and income inequality should treat inequality as a quadratic function within a regression model.

Recurring Themes of Network Support Exhibited by Adult Burn Survivors: A Qualitative Investigation

This heuristic phenomenological study explored how eight burn-surviving adults living in the Midwestern U.S. experienced their social networks following discharge from a regional burn center. Participants were interviewed about their seven domains of post-burn health. The mean age of sample at the time of burns was 42.38 with burn injuries impacting >20% of total body surface area (TBSA). Data analysis identified common themes reflecting structural characteristics of social networks including reciprocity, intensity/strength, complexity, homogeneity, geographic dispersion and formality. We conclude that network characteristics differed in availability based on population size and urban vs. rural localities of participants’ home communities.

REDES DE TRABALHO E CONFIANÇA EM UMA FEIRA DE ROUPAS

Este estudo tem como objetivo identificar redes sociais, especificamente redes de trabalho e de confiança, entre comerciantes de uma feira de roupas. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, com uso de observação, de entrevistas e de análise de conteúdo para tratamento dos dados. Utiliza-se também de técnicas de mapeamento de características relacionais e estruturais de redes sociais. Como resultados, constatou-se a existência de redes de trabalho e de confiança no dia a dia das interações entre feirantes, mobilizadas por meio de capital social, e sendo um arranjo importante na ordenação cotidiana de seu trabalho. As redes sociais envolvem laços familiares e de amizade, além de vínculos de trabalho remunerado. Identificou-se a formação de relações de ajuda e de reciprocidade entre feirantes de bancas diferentes, apresentando um contraponto às vivências de individualismo e de fragmentação social presentes na cultura do capitalismo flexível.
 Palavras-chave: Redes sociais. Trabalho. Confiança. Informalidade.

Self-reported depression and social support are associated with egocentric network characteristics of HIV-infected women of color

BackgroundWe explore the social network characteristics associated with depressive symptoms and social support among HIV-infected women of color (WOC).MethodsNetwork data were collected from 87 HIV-infected WOC at an academic Infectious Disease clinic in the United States (US) south. With validated instruments, interviewers also asked about depressive symptoms, social support, and treatment-specific social support. Linear regression models resulted in beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for the relationships among network characteristics, depression, and support provision.ResultsFinancial support provision was associated with lower reported depressive symptoms while emotional support provision was associated with increased reported social support. Talking less than daily to the first person named in her network, the primary alter, was associated with a nearly 3-point decrease in reported social support for respondents. Having people in their social network who knew their HIV status was also important.ConclusionsWe found that both functional and structural social network characteristics contributed to perceptions of support by HIV-infected WOC.

Electric Vehicles Scale Evolution Model Considering Social Attributes

Predicting the scale of electric vehicles at different time is the basis for the power grid to effectively accept charging loads. The development of electric vehicles is not only affected by economy, technology and policy, but also affected by the factors from social networks. This paper proposes the electric vehicle purchase decision model considering the influences of technology, economy and society. A two-dimensional space is used to characterize the random influences of related economic and social groups on consumer decisions, which can dynamically simulate the interaction between social environment and consumer decisions. Thus, based on such two-dimensional social space, an electric vehicle scale evolution model is established, so that it can be used to analyze the impact of the structural characteristics of social networks on the scale evolution. A large community in Changsha is taken as an example to analyze the scale development trend of electric vehicles under different social networks. Case studies demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Social network and HIV risk behaviors in female sex workers: a systematic review

BackgroundSocial network characteristics have an important role in understanding HIV transmission among female sex workers. The purpose of this systematic review was to summarize and critically appraise the existing studies on the social network characteristics and HIV risk behaviors among female sex workers.MethodA systematic review was performed using predefined eligibility criteria through searching electronic databases. Two independent reviewers assessed the methodological quality of studies.ResultsNineteen papers met the eligible review criteria. The synthesized evidence suggests that characteristics of social networks, especially functional characteristics such as social support and social capital, are important constructs for understanding the HIV risk behaviors.ConclusionsThe findings of the present review enhance our understanding of the role of social network characteristics in HIV risk behaviors among female sex workers. However, the findings also highlighted a dearth of knowledge about the association of structural characteristics of social networks with HIV risk behaviors among female sex workers.

Identification of Sybil attacks on social networks using a framework based on user interactions

The popularity of modern social networks has rendered social media platforms vulnerable to malicious activities. One such activity is a Sybil attack, in which a single entity emulates the behaviors of multiple users and attempts to create problems for other users and a network itself. This problem has prompted researchers to develop several techniques for preventing Sybil attacks, but in most cases, the efficiency assumptions that underlie proposed methods are not oriented toward reality. The current study puts forward an efficient framework for identifying Sybil attacks. The highly precise framework is underlain by rational assumptions and detects attacks on the basis of the structural characteristics of social networks and the social interactions among users. We evaluate our proposed framework using both synthetic and real world social network topologies. We show that SybilUncover is able to accurately identify high precision rate. Moreover, SybilUncover performs orders of magnitudes better than existing Sybil detection mechanisms.

SA Framework based De-anonymization of Social Networks

The data of social networks contains a large amount of personal information, of which may be public or insignificant, but some may be sensitive and private. Once the user privacy leaked, it may bring a variety of troubles for users. Holders of social networking data first conduct anonymization before the data is published. However, the simple anonymity method does not play a very good protection. At present, a number of de-anonymization attacks for the data releasing of social networks have arisen. These de-anonymization attacks are mostly based on the network structure with the use of feature matching and other methods. In this paper, we model the social network as a Structure-Attribute (SA) framework which integrates the structural characteristics of social networks and social node properties, adding some attribute nodes to the social network. The similarity measurement of social network nodes is proposed, with the consideration of the structure similarity and attribute similarity. The accuracy of node matching and de-anonymization is greatly improved. We conduct our de-anonymization based on the realistic dataset to verify the accuracy and efficiency.

Development Interventions and Agriculture Adaptation: A Social Network Analysis of Farmer Knowledge Transfer in Ghana

Social ties play an important role in agricultural knowledge exchange, particularly in developing countries with high exposure to agriculture development interventions. Institutions often facilitate agricultural training projects, with a focus on agroecological practices, such as agroforestry and agrobiodiversity. The structural characteristics of social networks amongst land managers influences decision-making to adopt such adaptive agroecoloigcal practice; however, the extent of knowledge transfer beyond direct project participants is often unknown. Using a social network approach, we chart the structure of agrarian knowledge networks (n = 131) in six communities, which have been differentially exposed to agriculture development interventions in Ghana. Farmer network size, density and composition were distinctly variable; development project-affiliated farmers were embedded in larger networks, had non-affiliated farmers within their networks, were engaged in more diverse agricultural production and reported adopting and adapting agroecological practice more frequently. Such bridging ties that link across distinctive groups in a network can expose network members to new and innovative agroecological practices, such as increasing agrobiodiversity, thus, contributing to livelihood strategies that mitigate environmental and market risk. Furthermore, we show that these knowledge networks were crop-specific where network size varied given the type of crop produced. Such factors, which may influence the rate and extent of agroecological knowledge diffusion, are critical for the effectiveness of land management practices as well as the persistence of agriculture development interventions.

Network Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance: A Case Study of Swiss Landscape Management

Structural characteristics of social networks have been recognized as important factors of effective natural resource governance. However, network analyses of natural resource governance most often remain static, even though governance is an inherently dynamic process. In this article, we investigate the evolution of a social network of organizational actors involved in the governance of natural resources in a regional nature park project in Switzerland. We ask how the maturation of a governance network affects bonding social capital and centralization in the network. Applying separable temporal exponential random graph modeling (STERGM), we test two hypotheses based on the risk hypothesis by Berardo and Scholz (2010) in a longitudinal setting. Results show that network dynamics clearly follow the expected trend toward generating bonding social capital but do not imply a shift toward less hierarchical and more decentralized structures over time. We investigate how these structural processes may contribute to network effectiveness over time.

Privacy protection disturbance method of society network based on spectrum constraint and sensitive area division

To solve the attacks of sensitve edge identification using social individual neighborhood information as background knowledge inside the social networks,a random disturbance method based on spectrum constraint and sensitive area division was proposed.The main idea of this method was to divide the network into sensitive zone and non-sensitive zone.It compared the last disturbance spectrum size of the social network graph with the original social network graph,and chose the right edges to add,delete or convert based on the comparison results and spectrum constraints,thus improving the usability of social network data.This method can improve the degree of privacy protection by eliminating invalid disturbances.The experimental results show that it can protect structural characteristics of social network better.

Differential Associations of Social Support and Social Connectedness With Structural Features of Social Networks and the Health Status of Older Adults

This study explores the extent to which the constructs of social support and social connectedness differ in terms of their associations with the structural characteristics of social networks and the health status of older adults. Trained interviewers conducted 126 face-to-face interviews with community-dwelling older adults aged 65 to 85 years. Having frequent contact with network members was positively associated with social support. Network density and having network members living in close proximity were positively associated with perceived social connectedness. Furthermore, perceived social connectedness had a significant positive association with health status, whereas social support did not. Perceived social connectedness may be relatively more important to the health and well-being of older adults than the perceived availability of social support. Efforts to enhance older adults' social relationships can be focused on developing friends and companions, allowing them to feel socially engaged in society.

Personal Social Networks and Dual Disorders: A Literature Review and Implications for Practice and Future Research

ABSTRACT Objectives: To review and examine the literature on social networks and dual disorders, and the separate literatures on social networks in relation to mental illness and substance abuse respectively, and to consider implications for practice and research. Methods: Papers selected for review included empirical studies of social networks and/or social support of adults with diagnosed substance use and/or mental disorders. Results: Thirty-six studies met the criteria for review which is organized around three themes: structural characteristics of social networks, network composition, and the impact of social networks on treatment and recovery. Conclusions: Social networks function both as a predictor as well as an outcome of mental illness and substance use. Understanding and assessment of social networks is important to understanding addictive behaviors. Further research is needed in the following areas: the role of social networks in readiness for treatment, entry into and participation in treatment, and support for recovery; the impact of treatment and peer support programs on social networks; social networks in relation to a wider range of mental disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder); and the impact of race, ethnicity, and gender on social networks of adults with dual disorders. In addition, the role that families play in treatment and recovery as well as the impact of clients' dual disorders upon family members needs examination.

The flow of information through social networks: diagonal-free measures of inefficiency and the structural determinants of inefficiency

Abstract The aim of this paper is to (1) propose specific diagonal-free measures of the inefficiency of information flow through social networks and (2) present an analysis of the structural determinants of inefficiency. We employ a formal model of collective action developed by Coleman (1973, 1990); link it to the Markov model of interpersonal influence developed by among others French (1956), Harary (1959), and Friedkin (1991; Friedkin and Johnsen 1990); and extend it to measure inefficiency in information flow based on the concept of mean first passage times. It is shown that structural characteristics of social networks — such as global density, local density, diameter, number of bridges, and inequality in centrality, and certain interactions among these variables — strongly affect inefficiency. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

Social integration and social support: Moving “social support” beyond the individual level

Despite the extra-individual nature of social relationships, social support and social networks have been treated by and large as individual-level concepts. This article describes some of the forms that an individualistic bias takes in our current approaches to conceptualization and measurement of social support and social networks and suggests three steps towards an extra-individual treatment of these concepts: (1) expand notions of social support to encompass social integration; (2) examine the role of groups and settings as social network “members”; and (3) explore functional and structural characteristics of social networks as independent and dependent measures.

Structural characteristics of social networks and their relationship with social support in the elderly: Who provides support

The analyses presented here examine relationships between structural characteristics of social networks and two types of support (instrumental and emotional support) in a sample of community- dwelling individuals aged 65 and older. For each type of support, two dimensions are examined (1) the availability of such support and (2) the perceived adequacy of that support. Regression models, adjusting for age, sex, race and income show that structural characteristics such as total network size, number of face-to-face contacts and number of proximal ties are associated with greater availability of both instrumental and emotional support. The perceived adequacy of both types of support is most strongly related to the number of monthly face-to-face contacts. Comparisons of specific types of ties show that neither ones' spouse nor ones' children are primary sources of support. Rather the presence of a confidant is strongly associated with both dimensions of instrumental and emotional support; the presence of a spouse is not. And, while ties with children are most strongly related to aspects of instrumental support, ties with close friends and relatives are more strongly related to aspects of emotional support. Analyses of possible interactions show that for those without a spouse, confidants assume greater importance in providing emotional support. For those without children, ties with close friends and relatives assume a larger role relative to the perceived adequacy of both emotional and instrumental support.

The Social Networks and Social Support of Married and Single Mothers in Sweden

The object of this research was to identify structural characteristics of social networks and contextual factors associated with high levels of social support for married and single mothers in Sweden. The networks of 37 single and 43 married mothers were compared. Single mothers were receiving more instrumental and personal support than married mothers were, although their networks did not differ substantially in structure. Single mothers receiving the highest levels of support were employed full-time; had few children; had networks composed mainly offriends (rather than relatives, neighbors, or workmates); saw their network members frequently; and kept a balance of giving and taking in their relationships. Results were similar for married mothers except that reciprocity was less important for maintaining relationships and that neighbors were more important as a source of support. Findings are discussed in relation to the results of related studies done in the U.S.