Social Network Ties Research Articles

Understandsing short and long term effects of social media on wellbeing of elderly

Social networks provide a mix of positive and negative experiences. Network members can provide help in times of need and day-to-day companionship, but they can also behave in ways that are inconsiderate, hurtful, or intrusive. Researchers must grapple with these dualities in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of how social network ties affect health and well-being. This article provides an overview of research that has examined the health-related effects of positive and negative aspects of social network involvement. If focuses on later life, a time when risks for declining health and for the loss or disruption of social relationships increase.

Identification and Description of Potentially Influential Social Network Members using the Strategic Player Approach

Background: Diffusion of innovations theory posits that ideas and behaviors can be spread through social network ties. In intervention work, intervening upon certain network members may lead to intervention effects “diffusing” into the network to affect the behavior of network members who did not receive the intervention. The strategic players (SP) method, an extension of Borgatti’s Key Players approach, is used to balance the (sometimes) opposing goals of spreading the intervention to as many members of the target group as possible, while preventing the spread of the intervention to others. Objectives: We sought to test whether members of the SP set have network position and non-network differences (such as demographic, attitudinal, or behavioral differences) compared to the remaining members of the target group (non-SPs). Methods: A first-year class at a private residential university (N = 1342) completed network and non-network measures. Analyses were restricted only to heavy drinkers, leading to a final analytic sample of 529. Results: SPs and non-SPs differed on multiple network variables, but did not differ on most demographic, attitudinal, and behavior variables. Conclusions: As designed, the SP program identified participants who were distinguished by their network position. The fact that they did not also differ on other characteristics shows the SPs are not significantly different than heavy drinkers who were not selected.

The internationalization of social hybrid firms

This paper is concerned with the internationalization of firms that combine social and profit objectives at their core, referred to as social hybrid firms. In contrast to most profit-focused firms, such firms tend to place considerable attention on the social impact within their local communities. For this reason, the internationalization behavior of these firms has received limited research attention. In our empirical setting, however, some social hybrid firms go beyond their local communities and internationalize. Using the attention-based view as a theoretical framework, we hypothesize several boundary conditions that affect the internationalization of social hybrid firms and test them with a representative data set of small and medium-sized, privately-owned, indigenous businesses in Canada. Our findings reveal that social hybrid firms are more likely to internationalize when the levels of institutional isomorphism are high and when the organization leverages economic network ties. However, social network ties and government support reduce the likelihood of social hybrid firms to internationalize. The study provides theoretical and practical implications related to the phenomenon of social hybrid firms, their internationalization, and the attention-based view of the firm.

Thank you for being a friend: The roles of strong and weak social network ties in attracting backers to crowdfunded campaigns

This paper uses daily panel data to study the effects that entrepreneurs’ social networks have on the success of their projects seeking capital from a potentially large group of individual investors (i.e. crowdfunding). Much of the literature to date demonstrates both theoretically and empirically that the benefit of large social networks accrues at the beginning of the crowdfunding campaign and are commonly the initial contributions that the project receives. We find this is consistent with unsuccessful campaigns, however, among successful campaigns many of the benefits of large online social networks occur only after the project has met its funding goal. In particular, we find that entrepreneurs with relatively large online social networks receive a statistically significantly larger number of backers only after the project is successfully funded. It is hypothesized this result is due to the composition of strong and weak ties in the entrepreneur’s social network. Importantly, when a project reaches its funding goal a positive signal of its quality is sent to those in the entrepreneur’s social network and motivates the relatively large group of weak ties in it to contribute. As a result, it puts into question the value that strong ties can have in aiding entrepreneurs in reaching their funding goal.

Dynamic Social-Aware Computation Offloading for Low-Latency Communications in IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) as a prospective platform to develop mobile applications, is facing with significant challenges posed by the tension between resource-constrained mobile smart devices and low-latency demanding applications. Recently, mobile edge computing (MEC) is emerging as a cornerstone technology to address such challenges in IoT. In this paper, by leveraging social ties in human social networks, we investigate the optimal dynamic computation offloading mode selection to jointly minimize the total tasks' execution latency and the mobile smart devices' energy consumption in MEC-aided low-latency IoT. Different from the previous studies, which mostly focus on how to exploit social tie structure among mobile smart device users to construct the permutation of all the feasible modes, we consider dynamic computation offloading mode selection with social awareness-aided network resource assignment, involving both the computing resources and transmit power from heterogeneous mobile smart devices. On the one hand, we formulate the dynamic computation offloading mode selection into the infinite-horizon time-average renewal-reward problems subject to time average latency constraints on a collection of penalty processes. On the other hand, an efficient solution is also developed, which elaborates on a Lyapunov optimization-based approach, i.e., drift-plus-penalty (DPP) algorithm. Numerical simulations are provided to validate the theoretical analysis and assess the performance of the proposed dynamic social-aware computation offloading mode selection method considering different configurations of the IoT network parameters.

Thank You for Being a Friend: The Role of Strong and Weak Social Network Ties in Attracting Backers to Crowdfunded Campaigns

This paper uses daily panel data to study the effects that entrepreneurs' social networks have on the success of their projects seeking capital from a potentially large group of individual investors (i.e. crowdfunding). Much of the literature to date demonstrates both theoretically and empirically that the benefit of large social networks accrues at the beginning of the crowdfunding campaign and are commonly the initial contributions that the project receives. We find this is consistent with unsuccessful campaigns, however, among successful campaigns many of the benefits of large online social networks occur only after the project has met its funding goal. In particular, we find that entrepreneurs with relatively large online social networks receive a statistically significantly larger number of backers only after the project is successfully funded. It is hypothesized this result is due to the composition of strong and weak ties in the entrepreneur’s social network. Importantly, when a project reaches its funding goal a positive signal of its quality is sent to those in the entrepreneur's social network and motivates the relatively large group of weak ties in it to contribute. As a result, it puts into question the value that strong ties can have in aiding entrepreneurs in reaching their funding goal.

How do enterprise social media affordances affect social network ties and job performance?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how four enterprise social media (ESM) affordances (visibility, association, editability and persistence) affect social network ties (instrumental and expressive), which, in turn, influence the in-role and innovative job performance of employees.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 251 ESM users in the workplace in China was conducted.FindingsAll four affordances are positively associated with instrumental ties, yet only the association and editability affordances are positively related to expressive ties. Although instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to in-role and innovative job performance, instrumental ties exert stronger effects on in-role job performance, whereas expressive ties show stronger effects on innovative job performance.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, additional relevant affordances should be included in an expanded model. Second, future research could examine how patterns of affordances use (unrelated, or hierarchically or sequentially related) affect organizational network ties. Third, there are likely (many) other exogenous factors affecting the model’s relationships. Fourth, the data collected are self-reported.Practical implicationsThis study advances the theoretical understanding of the role of ESM affordances in the workplace, especially through their influences on network ties. The findings can guide organizations on how to emphasize ESM affordances to foster instrumental and expressive ties to improve the job performance of employees.Originality/valueFirst, it provides novel views on affordance theory in ESM contexts by empirically testing four central affordances, thereby further providing preliminary evidence for prior theoretical propositions by confirming that social media affordances might be associated with or influence relational ties. Second, the study integrates an affordance lens and a social network perspective to investigate employees’ perceived performance behavior. Including social network ties can offer a more detailed understanding of the underlying processes of how ESM affordances can and do affect job performance. Third, it supports the validity of distinguishing instrumental and expressive ties in ESM contexts, thus offering a possible explanation for the inconsistencies in prior research on the impact of social networks on employee outcomes. Finally, it also shows how two kinds of organizational performance (in-role and innovative) are somewhat differentially influenced by affordances and network ties.

A social network theory perspective on how social ties influence perceived employability and job insecurity: evidence from school teachers

With the emergence of critical educational reforms and agentic career perspective, unemployment and job insecurity are considered a significant threat to school teachers in Pakistan. Drawing on the social network theory (SNT), this study attempts to investigate the effect of social network ties on perceived employability (PEM) and job insecurity (JIS) and how PEM mediates the association between social ties and job insecurity. Moreover, the current study pursues to assess the moderation effect of information sharing in the association between social network ties and PEM. Using the survey approach, we recruited teachers from government schools. The proposed model and relationships were validated through structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear regression. The findings revealed that strong tie is significantly related to PEM and JIS. Similarly, the weak tie is significantly related to PEM except for JIS. This study extends SNT by empirically establishing the influence of network characteristics (strong and weak ties) on PEM and JIS. This study helps school management and government policymakers to enhance teacher’s PEM and job security through networking and training opportunities. This research moreover guides government policymakers to formulate realistic education policies with the consensuses of school management. This practice will enhance teachers’ trust toward acceptance and implementation of educational policies. The present research successfully covers the gap by establishing the association of social network ties with PEM and JIS which was largely ignored in the literature on social employment management.

A descriptive pilot study of structural and functional social network ties among women in the women’s health initiative (WHI) study

ABSTRACT Few studies examine the network structure and function of older women’s health discussion networks. We sought to assess the feasibility and acceptability of collecting social network data via telephone from 72 women from the Women’s Health Initiative study and to describe structural and functional characteristics. Women were socially connected and had dense networks. Women were emotionally close to network members, but their networks were not used to facilitate communication with health-care providers. One-third of network members was not influential on health-related decision-making. Collecting social network data via telephone is feasible and an acceptable, though un-preferred, mode of data collection.

The impact of Founder’s human capital on firms’ extent of early internationalisation: Evidence from a least-developed country

This study addresses the impact of the principal founder’s general and specific human capital factors on the extent of the internationalisation of early internationalising firms originating from a relatively low-tech and labour-intensive industry in a least-developed country. We engage in quantitative analysis using data drawn from the Bangladeshi apparel industry. Our results reveal direct and indirect effects of specific human capital factors on the extent of a firm’s early internationalisation. However, contrary to the extant findings for developed and advanced-emerging economies, general human capital factors, namely the founder’s higher educational qualifications and international experience, are not found to be significant determinants of early internationalisation. Although human capital theory is used as a key theoretical framework, our study also draws on several other schools of thought, including the resource-based view, social networking theory and the learning perspective. The findings of our study provide evidence of the synergistic effects originating from the founder’s specific human capital factors. In particular, we find that resources, learning and social network ties derived from specific human capital factors influence the extent of a firm’s early internationalisation. Our findings are also consistent with the revisited Uppsala model in so far as they relate to the importance of knowledge and relationships prior to the establishment of focal firms. The implications of our findings for national and enterprise development policies are also considered.

Access to Medical Technologies: Do Gender and Social Capital matter?

We explore the relationship between the characteristics of social capital, the speed of access to medical technologies and the role of gender in a private practice context. Our findings from a sample of 98 German private practitioners show that: (a) being a woman has an overall negative impact on the speed of access to medical technologies; (b) private practitioners with strong social network ties obtain quicker access to medical technologies than do those with weak ties; (c) men relying on their weak ties perform better than women who do so. In contrast, we observe that women relying on strong ties outperform their male counterparts in terms of speed of access to medical technologies.

The Relationship between Online Social Network Ties and User Attributes

The distance between users has an effect on the formation of social network ties, but it is not the only or even the main factor. Knowing all the features that influence such ties is very important for many related domains such as location-based recommender systems and community and event detection systems for online social networks (OSNs). In recent years, researchers have analyzed the role of user geo-location in OSNs. Researchers have also attempted to determine the probability of friendships being established based on distance, where friendship is not only a function of distance. However, some important features of OSNs remain unknown. In order to comprehensively understand the OSN phenomenon, we also need to analyze users’ attributes. Basically, an OSN functions according to four main user properties: user geo-location, user weight, number of user interactions, and user lifespan. The research presented here sought to determine whether the user mobility pattern can be used to predict users’ interaction behavior. It also investigated whether, in addition to distance, the number of friends (known as user weight) interferes in social network tie formation. To this end, we analyzed the above-stated features in three large-scale OSNs. We found that regardless of a high degree freedom in user mobility, the fraction of the number of outside activities over the inside activity is a significant fraction that helps us to address the user interaction behavior. To the best of our knowledge, research has not been conducted elsewhere on this issue. We also present a high-resolution formula in order to improve the friendship probability function.

Follow Your Heart: Could Psychophysiology Be Associated with Political Discussion Network Homogeneity?

Most Americans are sorted into social networks that are largely politically homogeneous. A large body of political science research has explored the behavioral implications of being embedded in a politically homogeneous or heterogeneous network, but substantially less attention has been given to explaining why some people find themselves in politically homogeneous or heterogeneous social networks. In this article, we explore the psychological and physiological underpinnings of political network homogeneity. We use social network data from an original survey of 129 undergraduates paired with lab experimental evidence that measures individuals' physiological reactivity to an anticipated political discussion. Using our original survey and a separate nationally representative survey, we find suggestive evidence that individuals who are more socially anxious are more likely to share partisanship with their social network ties. Moreover, we find that individuals who experienced a greater increase in heart rate when anticipating a political discussion were more likely to be in homogeneous discussion networks, but we do not find a relationship between electrodermal activity and network homogeneity. Aversion to psychological and physiological discomfort induced by political discussions could contribute to social polarization in the American public.

The ambivalence of cultural homophily: Field positions, semantic similarities, and social network ties in creative collectives

This paper utilizes a mixture of qualitative, formal, and statistical socio-semantic network analyses to examine how cultural homophily works when field logic meets practice. On the one hand, because individuals in similar field positions are also imposed with similar cultural orientations, cultural homophily reproduces ‘objective’ field structure in intersubjective social network ties. On the other hand, fields are operative in practice and to accomplish pragmatic goals individuals who occupy different field positions often join in groups, creatively reinterpret the field-imposed cultural orientations, and produce cultural similarities alternative to the position-specific ones. Drawing on these emergent similarities, the cultural homophily mechanism might stimulate social network ties between members who occupy not the same but different field positions, thus contesting fields. I examine this ambivalent role of cultural homophily in two creative collectives, each embracing members positioned closer to the opposite poles of the field of cultural production. I find different types of cultural similarities to affect different types of social network ties within and between the field positions: Similarity of vocabularies stimulates friendship and collaboration ties within positions, thus reproducing the field, while affiliation with the same cultural structures stimulates collaboration ties between positions, thus contesting the field. The latter effect is visible under statistical analysis of ethnographic data, but easy to oversee in qualitative analysis of texts because informants tend to flag conformity to their positions in their explicit statements. This highlights the importance of mixed socio-semantic network analysis, both sensitive to the local context and capable of unveiling the mechanisms underlying the interplay between the cultural and the social.

Dynamic Social-Aware Peer Selection for Cooperative Relay Management With D2D Communications

In this paper, we investigate the optimal dynamic social-aware peer selection with spectrum-power trading to maximize the average sum energy efficiency (EE) of cellular users (CUs) for uplink transmission for an orthogonal frequency division multiple access cellular network with device-to-device (D2D) communications. Different from the previous studies, which mostly focus on how to exploit social ties in human social networks to construct the permutation of all the feasible peers, we consider dynamic peer selection with social awareness-aided spectrum-power trading in D2D overlaying communications. Specifically, the amount of transmit power from the D2D transmitters to relay the CUs for uplink transmission is determined by their social trust levels. Likewise, the D2D transmitters can gain the corresponding amount of spectrum from the CUs for D2D pair link communications, which can be regarded as the compensation of the power consumption for relaying CUs. We formulate the dynamic peer selection problems with social awareness-aided spectrum-power trading in cooperative D2D communications into the infinite-horizon time-average renewal-reward problems subject to time average constraints on a collection of penalty processes. And the Lyapunov optimization concepts-based drift-plus-penalty algorithms are proposed to solve them. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic peer selection algorithms. And further performance comparison indicates that the proposed dynamic peer selection algorithms not only maximize the average EE of CUs but also guarantee higher privacy protection.

Fundraising in the Digital Era: Legitimacy, Social Network, and Political Ties Matter in China

Development in information technology enables nonprofit organizations to reach more potential donors in a fast and affordable way. To help nonprofits form evidence-based strategies that suit the digital era, we conducted a study on a random sample of 400 Chinese foundations, investigating to what extent organizational legitimacy, network, and political ties influence their ability to attract donation. Results show that in terms of legitimacy, comparing to the past, organizations need to disclose additional information beyond what is required by the government to foster a trusting relationship. In terms of network, online networking can not only bring in online donations but also potentially increase offline donations. In terms of political ties, implicit political ties are beneficial to the organization, whereas explicit political ties may have negative influences.

Social network ties to nightlife and healthcare professionals and prescription drug misuse among young adults

BackgroundNightlife scenes have been characterized as risk environments where social ecology and network ties facilitate substance use. In contrast to other substances, the prescription drug problem also has been shaped by the healthcare system. How network ties to professionals in these domains are associated with prescription drug misuse remains a key area of study. MethodsWe analyzed a sample of 404 young adults who misuse prescription drugs, recruited from nightlife venues primarily via time-space sampling. We evaluated nine types of network ties via friends and family (5 nightlife professions and 4 healthcare professions) as well as total ties in each occupational domain and their relationship to three different outcomes – frequency of misuse, escalation to non-oral use, and substance-related problems. Negative binomial, logistic, and linear regression methods were employed. We then examined mechanisms by which these network associations may operate. ResultsTies to party promoters (p < .05) and bouncers (p < .01) were positively associated with all three outcomes. A single outcome each was associated with ties to DJs (problems, p < .01), musicians (frequency, p < .05), and bartenders (escalation, p < .05). The total number of network ties in the nightlife domain was positively associated with all three outcomes, with each additional tie increasing frequency (20.3%, p < .001), odds of escalation (OR = 42.9%, p < .01), and problems (12.5%, p < .01). The number of sources, peer norm context, and social bonding were explanatory mechanisms for all three outcomes for nightlife networks. Specific occupational ties and the total number of ties to healthcare professionals were not associated with any outcome. ConclusionEmbeddedness in nightlife networks is related to patterns of prescription drug misuse, and some of this association can be explained by multiple mechanisms of social networks. By contrast, ties to healthcare professionals are not associated with patterns of misuse among such young adults.

Mutual Aid Networks: Informal Shop Floor Organizing among Mexican Migrant Construction Workers in San Diego

Labor scholarship overwhelmingly continues to frame the value of migrants’ social network ties by successful or unsuccessful incorporation into formal sectors of the host economy. Within this context, migrant social network ties are commonly viewed as positive only when they lead to union-building efforts. The current study extends the social network analysis to include informal resistance and struggle. Based on ethnographic research among Mexican migrant drywallers in the San Diego construction industry, I argue that migrant workers draw on social network ties to craft less obvious and complex alternative organizing strategies to resist labor flexibility and casualization. Groups of drywallers, which I term collective cuadrillas, use social network ties not only as an impetus to improve workplace conditions but also to convene collectively on the shop floor to alleviate fierce competition among workmates and rid the production process of hierarchal work structures for more democratically managed job practices.

Will Scale-Free Popularity Develop Scale-Free Geo-Social Networks?

Empirical results show that spatial factors such as distance, population density and communication range affect our social activities, also reflected by the development of ties in social networks. This motivates the need for social network models that take these spatial factors into account. Therefore, in this paper we propose a gravity-low-based geo-social network model, where connections develop according to the popularity of the individuals, but are constrained through their geographic distance and the surrounding population density. Specifically, we consider a power-law distributed popularity, and random node positions governed by a Poisson point process. We evaluate the characteristics of the emerging networks, considering the degree distribution, the average degree of neighbors and the local clustering coefficient. These local metrics reflect the robustness of the network, the information dissemination speed and the communication locality. We show that unless the communication range is strictly limited, the emerging networks are scale-free, with a rank exponent affected by the spatial factors. Even the average neighbor degree and the local clustering coefficient show tendencies known in non-geographic scale-free networks, at least when considering individuals with low popularity. At high-popularity values, however, the spatial constraints lead to popularity-independent average neighbor degrees and clustering coefficients.

A descriptive pilot study of structural and functional social network ties among women in the women’s health initiative (WHI) study

A descriptive pilot study of structural and functional social network ties among women in the women’s health initiative (WHI) study