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This new volume looks at a selection of important issues resulting from the digitization of society, which has fundamentally transformed organizations. These new technological innovations are creating new opportunities as well as new challenges. This volume considers the emerging paradigm of digitization in economy and society, which covers a wide spectrum of digitization processes and consequences, accelerated by the current COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown scenario, and the increase in digitization by individuals, businesses, and governments.The book explores digital social trends, digital marketing, and the service industry, as well as the societal consequences of technologies and solutions to those problems. The diverse topics include the societal impact of digitization on gender issues, virtual relationships, e-government, online privacy, the gig economy (using Uber as an example), work life changes, online education, online media health public service advertisements, loneliness of the elderly, and more.This book is essential reading for students and faculty of social sciences, economics, and management technology to understand the broad dimensions of digitization in our everyday life and the theoretical and practical utilization and outcome of digitization.

In Social Networks of Meaning and Communication, Jan A. Fuhse offers a coherent theory of social structures as networks of relations interwoven with meaning. Drawing upon and extending the relational sociology of Harrison White and Charles Tilly, Fuhse seeks to establish a theory of social networks. Using a broad range of classic and contemporary social theory, he reconceptualizes social networks as constituted in patterns of expectations that form, reproduce, and change over the course of communicative events. These events, he argues, are the basic building blocks of the social world. They lead to expectations about the behavior of actors and their interaction with others – the meaning structure making for observable regularities of communication in social networks. Social Networks of Meaning and Communication lays out a relational and constructivist perspective of social networks, highlighting a number of implications for social relationships, groups, and collective actors, as well as ethnic categories and cultural differences, roles and institutions, gender and family relations, and methods of social network analysis. Its framework bridges the gap in social network research between technically sophisticated analyses and complex, elusive theorizing.

While some social scientists may argue that we have always been networked, the increased visibility of networks today across economic, political, and social domains can hardly be disputed. Social networks fundamentally shape our lives and social network analysis has become a vibrant, interdisciplinary field of research. In The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks, Ryan Light and James Moody have gathered forty leading scholars in sociology, archaeology, economics, statistics, and information science, among others, to provide an overview of the theory, methods, and contributions in the field of social networks. Each of the thirty-three chapters in this Handbook moves through the basics of social network analysis aimed at those seeking an introduction to advanced and novel approaches to modeling social networks statistically. They cover both a succinct background to, and future directions for, distinctive approaches to analyzing social networks. The first section of the volume consists of theoretical and methodological approaches to social networks, such as visualization and network analysis, statistical approaches to networks, and network dynamics. Chapters in the second section outline how network perspectives have contributed substantively across numerous fields, including public health, political analysis, and organizational studies. Despite the rapid spread of interest in social network analysis, few volumes capture the state-of-the-art theory, methods, and substantive contributions featured in this volume. This Handbook therefore offers a valuable resource for graduate students and faculty new to networks looking to learn new approaches, scholars interested in an overview of the field, and network analysts looking to expand their skills or substantive areas of research.

This book reviews the research on Einstein's brain from a sociological perspective and in the context of the social brain paradigm. Instead of “Einstein, the genius of geniuses” standing on the shoulders of giants, Restivo proposes a concept of Einstein the social being standing on the shoulders of social networks. Rather than challenging Einstein's uniqueness or the uniqueness of his achievements, the book grounds Einstein and his achievements in a social ecology opposed to the myths of the “I,” individualism, and the very idea of “genius.” “Einstein” is defined by the particular configuration of social networks that he engaged as his life unfolded, not by biological inheritances.

The book addresses the issue of interdisciplinary understanding of collaboration on the topic of social network studies. Researchers and practitioners from various disciplines including sociology, computer science, socio-psychology, public health, complex systems, and management science have worked largely independently, each with quite different principles, terminologies, theories. and methodologies. The book aims to fill the gap among these disciplines with a number of the latest interdisciplinary collaboration studies.

L'usage généralisé d'un terme nous fait parfois perdre son sens précis. Il en est ainsi du mot réseau, dont le succès accompagne le développement extraordinaire des commu-nications et, parallèlement, la valorisation des relations entre les êtres humains. Dans ce dernier champ naissent et agissent les réseaux sociaux. Quelle est l'utilité de ces réseaux? Mais d'abord, qu'est-ce qu'un réseau social? En quoi consiste un réseau? Vincent Lemieux trace ici les chemins qui nous relient les uns aux autres, de'proches'en'connaissances', dans le réseau d'aide entre voisines comme dans les grands réseaux dont l'objectif est d'influencer les politiques publiques. A travers les divers usages de ces réseaux multiples se précise graduellement la carte de nos relations humaines, individuelles et collectives.

The last several years have seen mass uprisings and dynamic social movements across the globe, from the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, to the Black Lives Matter movement following Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. There is no doubt that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter accelerated and facilitated these uprisings, providing a way for people to organize and express themselves despite government repression. From Tahrir Square to Ferguson: Social Networks as Facilitators of Social Movements attempts to answer the question of whether these movements could have succeeded before the advent of the Internet age. From political protest to regime change, social movements have become increasingly digital. Taking on the current political climate from an international perspective, From Tahrir Square to Ferguson: Social Networks as Facilitators of Social Movements attempts to address the issues of a growing social media audience facing a wide variety of social and political issues.

Success and career growth in academic life depend upon reaching and influencing the widest audience possible. To do so, scientists strive to develop personalized trust. They do so by establishing a large number of connections through networking and also through the strength of their arguments and the validity and reliability of their research. To secure increasingly rare tenure positions and achieve salary increases, promotions, and recognition, scholars place themselves on a continuum of priorities ranging from total emphasis on networking to complete focus on advancing knowledge, trying to find some middle ground between the two extremes.Anton Oleinik argues that when scholars prioritize networking, science reproduces features of a'small world,'in which personal connections prevail. Who knows whom matters more than who knows what. In this scenario, one's status derives more from affiliation with a specific group of scholars or a particular university than from contributing to advancing knowledge. Acknowledging that it would be a mistake to consider networking the main source of evils in science, Oleinik instead criticizes the decisions scholars make while struggling to find that middle ground between networking and advancing knowledge, and managing conflicts between these priorities.The fierce competition for increasingly scarce research funds, and the difficulty of finding jobs in academia underlines the growing importance of the choices made by an academic. Though Oleinik focuses particularly on the social sciences, his ideas are just as relevant to other disciplinary areas.

Where do ideas come from? How do they get put into action? How can we create social structures that are productive and creative? If the Big Data revolution has a presiding genius, it is MIT's Alex Pentland. Over years of groundbreaking experiments, he has distilled remarkable discoveries that have become the bedrock of a new scientific field: social physics. This revolutionary science shows that innovation doesn't come from a few exceptionally bright people, but from the flow of ideas — especially how our social networks spread ideas and turn those ideas into behaviours. Thanks to the rise of smartphones, GPS devices, and the internet, Pentland and his teams can study patterns of information exchange in a social network, without any knowledge of the content of the information. Using this data, they can tell with stunning accuracy how effective that network is, whether it's a business or an entire city. Pentland shows us how to fine-tune these networks to improve their performance — for instance, by maximising a group's collective intelligence, or by using social incentives to work through disruptive change. Social Physics will change the way we think about how we learn and how our social groups work — and can be made to work better, at every level of society. It is an entirely new way to look at life itself.

Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge untersuchen die sozialen Beziehungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund. Zumeist werden netzwerkanalytische Methoden verwendet, mit denen unterschiedliche Formen und Grade der Integration operationalisierbar sind. Die Beiträge basieren überwiegend auf Daten des an der Universität Bremen angesiedelten DFG-Projektes „Integration durch Freundschaft? Dynamiken sozialer Assimilation von Kindern aus Migrantenfamilien in multiplexen Peernetzwerken“.

'This book examines the production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge within networked communities in the wider global context of pervasive Web 2.0 and social media services'--

This book covers technical fundamentals, complexity and social networks, and communication and language. It raises readers'interest in social networks, the importance of language in the emergence and maintenance of networks, the integral patterns of interconnectivity, and the means to measure and model social structure. It presents a broad range o

An insightful map of the landscape of social meals, Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality argues that the ways in which Americans eat together play a central role in social life in the United States. Delving into a wide range of research, Alice P. Julier analyzes etiquette and entertaining books from the past century and conducts interviews and observations of dozens of hosts and guests at dinner parties, potlucks, and buffets. She finds that when people invite friends, neighbors, or family members to share meals within their households, social inequalities involving race, economics, and gender reveal themselves in interesting ways: relationships are defined, boundaries of intimacy or distance are set, and people find themselves either excluded or included.

In diesem Band präsentieren Medien- und Informationswissenschaftler, Netzwerkforscher aus Informatik, Texttechnologie und Physik, Soziologen und Linguisten interdisziplinär Aspekte der Erforschung komplexer Mehrebenen-Netzwerke. Im Zentrum ihres Interesses stehen Untersuchungen zum Zusammenhang zwischen sozialen und sprachlichen Netzwerken und ihrer Dynamiken, aufgezeigt an empirischen Beispielen aus dem Bereich des Web 2.0, aber auch an historischen Dokumentenkorpora sowie an Rezeptions-Netzwerken aus Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaft.

Creativity in organizations has become a key topic of organizational research. This work expands on existing research by exploring creativity in the dynamics of social networks. Collective creativity is introduced as a central part of organizational learning and seen as the expression of creativity on the collective level. The research is able to empirically assess creativity in the development of social structures. For the assessment of creativity this work applies a longitudinal study design by combining social network analysis with creativity studies. The approach enables to relate creativity indicators with social network measures. It is based on an empirical study of innovation projects in the automotive industry and thereby extends existing research and theories on creativity, social network dynamics and organizational learning.

If all politics is local, then so is almost everything else, argues sociologist Gary Alan Fine. We organize our lives by relying on those closest to us—family members, friends, work colleagues, team mates, and other intimates—to create meaning and order. In this thoughtful and wide-ranging book, Fine argues that the basic building blocks of society itself are forged within the boundaries of such small groups, the'tiny publics'necessary for a robust, functioning social order at all levels. Action, meaning, authority, inequality, organization, and institutions all have their roots in small groups. Yet for the past twenty-five years social scientists have tended to ignore the power of groups in favor of an emphasis on organizations, societies, or individuals. Based on over thirty-five years of Fine's own ethnographic research across an array of small groups, Tiny Publics presents a compelling new theory of the pivotal role of small groups in organizing social life. No social system can thrive without flourishing small groups. They provide havens in an impersonal world, where faceless organizations become humanized. Taking examples from such diverse worlds as Little League baseball teams, restaurant workers, high school debate teams, weather forecasters, and political volunteers, Fine demonstrates how each group has its own unique culture, or idioculture—the system of knowledge, beliefs, behavior, and customs that define and hold a group together. With their dense network of relationships, groups serve as important sources of social and cultural capital for their members. The apparently innocuous jokes, rituals, and nicknames prevalent within Little League baseball teams help establish how teams function internally and how they compete with other teams. Small groups also provide a platform for their members to engage in broader social discourse and a supportive environment to begin effecting change in larger institutions. In his studies of mushroom collectors and high school debate teams, Fine demonstrates the importance of stories that group members tell each other about their successes and frustrations in fostering a strong sense of social cohesion. And Fine shows how the personal commitment political volunteers bring to their efforts is reinforced by the close-knit nature of their work, which in turn has the power to change larger groups and institutions. In this way, the actions and debates begun in small groups can eventually radiate outward to affect every level of society. Fine convincingly demonstrates how small groups provide fertile ground for the seeds of civic engagement. Outcomes often attributed to large-scale social forces originate within such small-scale domains. Employing rich insights from both sociology and social psychology, as well as vivid examples from a revealing array of real-work groups, Tiny Publics provides a compelling examination of the importance of small groups and of the rich vitality they bring to social life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

Ideal for use as a core or secondary text in lower division social inequalities or social problems courses, this book explains how the changing nature and uses of the Internet not only mirror today's social inequalities, but also are at the heart of how stratification is now taking place. A pioneering work, both intellectually, and pedagogically.

Half of all workers are hired through personal referrals, and networks of social connections channel the flows of capital, technology, and international trade. Sociologists and economists alike recognize that economic exchange is shaped by social networks, which propagate information and facilitate trust, but each discipline brings a distinct theoretical perspective to the study of networks. Sociologists have focused on how networks shape individual behavior, economists on how individual choices shape networks. The Missing Links is a bold effort by an interdisciplinary group of scholars to synthesize sociological and economic theories of how economic networks emerge and evolve. Interweaving sophisticated theoretical models and concrete case studies, The Missing Links is both an introduction to the study of economic networks and a catalyst for further research. Economists Rachel Kranton and Deborah Minehart illustrate their field's approach to modeling network formation, showing how manufacturers form networks of suppliers in ways that maximize profits. Exemplifying the sociological approach, Ronald Burt analyzes patterns of cooperation and peer evaluations among colleagues at a financial organization. He finds that dense connections of shared acquaintances lead to more stable reputations. In the latter half of the book, contributors combine the insights of sociology and economics to explore a series of case studies. Ray Reagans, Ezra Zuckerman, and Bill McEvily investigate an R & D firm in which employees participate in overlapping collaborative teams, allowing the authors to disentangle the effects of network structure and individual human capital on team performance. Kaivan Munshi and Mark Rosenzweig examine how economic development and rising inequality in India are reshaping caste-based networks of mutual insurance and job referrals. Their study shows that people's economic decisions today are shaped both by the legacy of the caste hierarchies and by the particular incentives and constraints that each individual faces in an evolving labor market. Economic globalization is forging new connections between people in distant corners of the world, while unsettling long-standing social relations. Anyone interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of this era of rapid change will find a highly informative guide in The Missing Links.

Science is like a tree: contrary to popular belief, both trees and science grow at their edges, not at their core. For science, this means that most of the fruitful and exciting developments are not happening at the core of established?elds, but are instead happening at the boundaries between such?elds. This has been particularly true for Computer Science. The most interesting database developments don't happen inside the Database community, but rather where databases hit Biology. Similarly, the most interesting developments in Ar-?cial Intelligence in recent years have happened where AI met the Web. Theyoung?eldofSemanticWebresearchhasbeenoneoftheresultsofanumber of different sub?elds of Computer Science being exposed to the challenges of the Web: databases, computational linguistics, knowledge representation, knowled- based systems and service-oriented computing are just some of the sub?elds that are all making contributions to the Semantic Web vision, namely a Web that consists not only of linksbetween web-pagesfull of picturesand text, but of a Semantic Web that consists of links between computer-interpretable data. Such a Semantic Web would make it possible to query and reason over integrated data-sets consisting of separate pieces of information that were never intended to be linked together, but that can nevertheless be fruitfully combined and integrated, sometimes even by a third party who neither wrote nor ownsany of the original piecesof data (just as is possible with web-pages on the current Web).

Concernant des champs d'activités aussi divers que la protection de l'environnement, les biotechnologies agricoles, la lutte contre le Sida, le commerce équitable, le sport,... la notion d'utilité sociale est multiple. Cette notion multidimensionnelle sert de prisme pour saisir les nouvelles caractéristiques de l'action publique.

Networks in the Global Village examines how people live through personal communities: their networks of friends, neighbors, relatives, and coworkers. It is the first book to compare the communities of people around the world. Major social differences between and within the First, Second, and Third Worlds affect the opportunities and insecurities w