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Abstract
This paper brings two major research lines in current sociology together. Research on social networks has long focused primarily on network effects but meanwhile also addresses the emergence and dynamics of networks. Research on trust in social and economic relations shows that networks have effects on trust. Using game theory, we provide a simple model that allows for an integrated and simultaneous analysis of network effects on trust and for the endogenous emergence of the network. The model also allows for characterizing the value of the network. We use standard assumptions on full strategic rationality. Testable implications of the model as well as model extensions are sketched.

AbstractSocial network‐based methods are increasingly used to estimate induced abortion incidence and investigate correlates. Approaches differ in the social tie definitions used to identify which social network members' abortion experiences respondents will report. This study compares the effect of using the "best friend" (closest female friend) versus "confidante" (specifying mutual sharing of personal information) definition on abortion incidence estimation. We use data from a nationally representative survey of women aged 15–49 in Burkina Faso (conducted in 2020–2021) where respondents were randomized into two versions of an abortion module, using different friend definitions. We computed abortion rate estimates by friend definition and adjusted for assumption violations (transmission bias, surrogate sample selection bias). Unadjusted incidence rates varied from 11.7 [4.1–19.2] abortions per 1,000 women to 15.6 [9.7–21.4], depending on friend definition. The confidante definition yielded higher adjusted estimates (36.2 [25.1–47.2]) than the best friend definition (17.0 [8.7–25.3]) due to greater transmission bias adjustment. Both estimates exceeded the respondent self‐reported abortion incidence (4.0 [2.2–5.9]). Our results indicate that either friend definition produces higher incidence estimates than self‐report but suggest a potential advantage for the "best friend" over the "confidante" definition given lower transmission bias. Further research should assess generalizability of these findings in other contexts.

Recent world events have demonstrated that the Internet-and social media tools in particular-are increasingly useful for political organizing, not merely frivolous virtual spaces for youthful publics to connect socially. Rather, social media is touted as "the crucible in which repressed civil societies can revive and develop." For the people of Central Asia-where free expression is curtailed and news outlets are under official or non-state, non-official government censorship-information and communication technology (ICT) provides an increasingly important vehicle for political expression. Blogging and social media tools may fulfill a crucial role for non-journalists and oppositional groups that journalism serves in more democratic societies, as recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran illustrate. In earlier eras, the costs associated with traditional or legacy media necessarily limited participation to small groups of elites. Now, the relative lack of entry costs in the online world raises the prospects for mass publics to bypass those traditional gatekeepers and become publishers and broadcasters on their own. ICTs have "had clear roles in both starting new democratic processes in some countries and entrenching them in others," Howard noted. However, the libertarian possibilities of increased freedom facilitated by ICT access have a dark reality, as repressitarian governments adapt to the Internet age by exerting power over the Internet's infrastructure and using activist communications for surveillance purposes. This paper reviews recent events and legal developments related to the Internet and social media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. They include legislation extending libel laws to online communications, blocking of oppositional and independent websites, and punishing journalists who report or comment for online media.

Several prominent public voices have advanced the hypothesis that networked communications erode the value of privacy in favor of a transparent connected existence. Especially younger generations are often described as prone to live "open digital lives". This hypothesis has raised considerable controversy, polarizing the reaction of its critics as well as of its partisans. But how likely is the "end of privacy"? Under which conditions might this scenario come to be? What are the business and policy implications? How to ethically assess risks and opportunities? To shed light on the co-evolution and mutual dependencies of networked structures and individual and collective strategies towards privacy, this book innovatively uses cutting-edge methods in computational social sciences to study the formation and maintenance of online social networks. The findings confound common arguments and clearly indicate that Internet and social media do not necessarily entail the end of privacy. Publicity is not "the new norm": quite to the contrary, the book makes the case that privacy is a resilient social force, resulting from a set of interconnected behaviors of Internet users

Contents: Nathan Rambukkana: Hashtags as Technosocial Events - Theorizing Hashtag Publics – Axel Bruns/Jean Burgess: Twitter Hashtags from Ad Hoc to Calculated Publics – Nathan Rambukkana: From #RaceFail to #Ferguson: The Digital Intimacies of Race-Activist Hashtag Publics – Theresa Sauter/Axel Bruns: #auspol: The Hashtag as Community, Event, and Material Object for Engaging with Australian Politics – Jean Burgess/Anne Galloway/Theresa Sauter: Hashtag as Hybrid Forum: The Case of #agchatoz – Daniel Faltesek: Hashtags and Activist Publics: #Time – Aaron S. Veenstra/Narayanan Iyer/Wenjing Xie/Benjamin A. Lyons/Chang Sup Park/Yang Feng: Come Together, Right Now: Retweeting in the Social Model of Protest Mobilization – Anna Antonakis-Nashif: Hashtagging the Invisible: Bringing Private Experiences into Public Debate : An #outcry against Sexism in Germany – Carlos D'Andréa/Geane Alzamora/Joana Ziller: Hashtags as Intermedia Agency Resources before FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil – Jenny Ungbha Korn: #FuckProp8: How Temporary Virtual Communities around Politics and Sexuality Pop Up, Come Out, Provide Support, and Taper Off – Stacy Blasiola/Yoonmo Sang/Weiai Wayne Xu: More than Words: Technical Activist Actions in #CISPA – Andy Campbell: Realism against #Realness: Wu Tsang, #Realness, and RuPaul's Drag Race – Amanda Grace Sikarskie: Living the #Quilt Life: Talking about Quiltmaking on Tumblr – Andrew Peck: Jokin' in the First World: Appropriate Incongruity and the #firstworldproblems Controversy – Anthony Santoro: #RaiderNation: The Digital and Material Identity and Values of a Superdiverse Fan Community – Meredith Clark: Black Twitter: Building Connection through Cultural Conversation – Nia I. Cantey and Cara Robinson: #BlackTwitter: Making Waves as a Social Media Subculture – Magdalena Olszanowski: The 1x1 Common: The Role of Instagram's Hashtag in the Development and Maintenance of Feminist Exchange – Sylvain Rocheleau/Mélanie Millette: Meta-Hashtag and Tag Co-occurrence: From Organization to Politics in the French Canadian Twittersphere – Brett Bergie and Jaigris Hodson: The Twitter Citizen: Problematizing Traditional Media Dominance in an Online Political Discussion – Sava Saheli Singh: Hashtagging #HigherEd.

This study examines the role of social and professional networks in the productivity of creative firms in Indonesia. In so doing, mixed methods are employed, including multilevel modelling as well as qualitative analysis, which is also performed to elaborate further on the process in which networking affects productivity. The Indonesian government promotes traditional businesses as creative industries, but they actually have different characteristics and networks. Therefore, in this paper creative and traditional cultural industries are differentiated. The results of multilevel analysis show that social capital is associated differently with the productivity of both types of industries. Creative industries appear to benefit from friendship, which facilitates their networking and creative processes. Meanwhile, friendship is negatively associated with the productivity of traditional cultural industries. This conclusion is affirmed by the qualitative analysis, which demonstrates that the relationship between friendship and productivity is rather complex. On the one hand, friendship helps firms find and develop their networked consumers. On the other hand, such strong ties between firm owners often lead to social events and gathering and thus, eliminate competition. Further to this, enhancing the productivity of these industries is better done not by forming associations which may only strengthen their bonding ties. Rather, providing common spaces that can facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas in a serendipitous and inclusive climate would be more effective.

International audience ; The diffusion of information is defined as the communication process by which an idea or information spreads within a social system and impacts the behavior of social actors (individuals). The social interaction plays an important role in studying the propagation of information and how it influences people. When an informational event occurs, it can either die out quickly or have significant impact on a population. The interactions could be supported by physical proximity contact, remote collaboration, any type of social meetings, and some forms of verbal or written communication, depending on the situations. Institutions and firms search to understand and predict the impact of information propagation on individuals. Agent-based modeling is a powerful approach for studying such a collective process. However, existing models oversimplify the cultural attributes, the different types of links, and information content, despite the evidence of their central role in the diffusion process. In this context, great benefits could be derived from the exploitation of an individual's personality and cultural values in the diffusion models. In this paper, we describe a new architecture for an agent-based model using the DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) framework and show how this architecture is flexible and can support the simulation of the dissemination process. In more detail, we define a set of models of individuals characterized by a set of state variables to represent the behavior of an individual and the individual's network within a multi-layer social network. Then, we start by introducing the platform architecture, specifically designed to simulate message propagation in a multi-layer network. Finally, a military scenario of message diffusion during a stabilization phase is used to test our DEVS models on the platform and the relevancy of the simulation results.

Abstract
In the United States, young Black men who have sex with men (YBMSM) remain disproportionately affected by HIV. The social networks in which YBMSM are embedded are generally understood to be critical factors in understanding their vulnerability. In this study, we acknowledge the relational richness of YBMSMs' social environments (what we define as multiplexity) and their increasing prioritization of online social networking sites (SNS). Specifically, we investigate whether protective and/or risky features of YBMSMs' Facebook friendships and group affiliations are related to their HIV prevention and sex behavior engagement, while also accounting for features of their offline confidant (or support) and sex networks. Using data from a population-based cohort study of YBMSM living in Chicago (N=268), we perform a series of multiple logistic regression analyses to examine associations between features of YBMSMs' Facebook, confidant, and sexual networks with three prevention outcomes and three sex behavior outcomes, while also controlling for factors at the individual and structural levels. Results show that network features play a more significant role in predicting engagement in sex behaviors than prevention behaviors. Specifically, having more confidants, having confidants who are family members, meeting sex partners online, having more YBMSM Facebook friends, belonging to Facebook groups with an LGBTQ focus, and having greater subject diversity in one's Facebook group affiliations were significantly associated with one or more sex behavior outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for HIV prevention intervention efforts.

This report presents a seed research project funded by the CCN+, that investigated digital engagement by three neighbouring Scottish Community Councils (CCs) in a distinct area of a Scottish city. Recent work had shown that CCs generally do not use the internet well to engage with their citizens, despite being required to find and deliver citizens' views to Local Authorities. In fact, over half had no observable internet presence, while a large proportion of CCs that earlier had informative internet presences no longer do so. Therefore there is a pressing need to learn how CCs' internet use can be strengthened so that CCs can live up to their requirements.This project researched whether the Community of Practice model could be used to understand relationships between CC members involved in digital engagement work, and to find techniques to improve practices. Interviews with CC members investigated how knowledge was and could be managed and the digital tools desired for digital engagement work. Action research was used to follow and support a CC beginning to use Twitter as a dissemination and engagement channel, to understand whether it could sustainably generate social capital despite CCs' low budgets and voluntary nature.A Community of Practice was found supporting the digital engagement practitioners in the neighbouring CCs, and that this is situated within a context of interested non-practitioners who share knowledge with practitioners. However, the Community of Practice is fragile, and knowledge management is conspicuously absent. Knowledge management is also not used other CCs that have fuller suites of digital engagement channels. The action research strand showed that active use of Twitter can increase engagement with citizens, and that collaboration brings unexpected rewards.This project investigated only one digital initiative set within one small Community of Practice. It is proposed to continue this work by investigating CCs' digital communication across Scotland – and similar organisations in other ...

One application of the emerging field of persona studies is to the analysis of online fan persona. Indeed, there already exists a deep tradition of attention to fan persona within fan studies. A persona-inflected fan studies involves attention to the shift from representational media to a presentational media paradigm and invites questions about the contemporary experience of the public presentation of the online self as a fan. In combining the object and persona lens, an approach emerges that takes into account the agency of the individual in its negotiation with various collectives as well as human and nonhuman actors in the networks of online identity performances. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are useful in exploring the fan persona as it registers indexically and intercommunicatively in the constitution of public activity in digitally networked environments.

"Reflecting emerging research and ongoing reassessments of social theory, The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists offers significant updates and revisions to the original Blackwell Companion published a decade ago. Volume I: Major Classical Theorists presents 18 comprehensive essays on social theorists writing in the classical tradition, more than half all-new for this Companion, written by some of the most eminent contemporary scholars in their field. In addition to detailing the make-up and development of specific social theories, each essay places the theorist and their ideas in personal, social, and historical context; and integrates the most current scholarship to offer assessments as to their continuing relevance. Well-known theorists such as Comte, Spencer, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Schutz, and Parsons are represented, as well as theorists historically excluded from the sociological canon, including Ibn Khaldun, Martineau, Gilman, and Du Bois. Other essays consider a set of classical theorists chosen for their particular relevance to contemporary theory: de Tocqueville on democracy, Schumpeter on capitalism, Mannheim on the sociology of knowledge, Veblen on consumer society, and Adorno on cultural theory. Edited by one of the most renowned figures in social theory, the Wiley-Blackwell Companion is an indispensable resource and reference to the life and times of the classical thinkers and their relevance to modern theorists and today's social world"--