This study examines how novel words originate in and disperse through online communities. It asks whether larger numbers of people or closer social ties are better environments to foster the adoption of new words. The data stem from Reddit, a large sample of web-mediated, asynchronous conversations. Reddit communities are divided by size in this study: larger communities are based on discussing...

Tens of thousands of families have been relocated from public housing in the last decade through the HOPE VI redevelopment initiative. Analyzing in-depth interviews with 41 families who were relocated from a severely distressed public housing development, I explore how neighborhood-based social capital is drawn upon for safety by examining how people kept safe in public housing, and what happen...

BACKGROUND This article provides new insights into the impact of social engagement on CVD risk factors in older adults. We hypothesized that objective (social participation, social ties and marital status) and subjective (emotional support) aspects of social engagement are independently associated with objective measures of cardiovascular risk. METHODS Data from the English Longitudinal Study...

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between virtuality and social capital. Does virtuality decrease the strength of individuals’ social ties? Or does virtuality increase social capital by expanding the range of individuals’ social networks? To address these questions, first, we identify the properties of virtuality, whose definition still varies in a variety of research s...

Social networks often provide only a binary perspective on social ties: two individuals are either connected or not. While sometimes external information can be used to infer the strength of social ties, access to such information may be restricted or impractical. Sintos and Tsaparas (KDD 2014) first suggested to infer the strength of social ties from the topology of the network alone, by lever...

The determination of prices is a key function of markets yet it is just beginning to be studied by sociologists. Most theories view prices as a consequence of economic processes. By contrast, we consider how social structure shapes prices. Building on embeddedness arguments and original fieldwork at large law firms, we propose that a firm’s embedded relationships influence prices by prompting p...

Over the last several years, a variety of Web 2.0 applications has been widely adopted by individual users and recently has received great attention from organizations. While an increasing number of organizations have started utilizing Web 2.0 applications in hopes of boosting collaboration and driving innovations, only a small number of different theoretical perspectives are available in the l...

We contrast Granovetter’s hypothesis (Granovetter, M. (1973). American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–1380; Granovetter, M. (1974). Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. University of Chicago Press; Granovetter, M. (1995). Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. University of Chicago Press) that social networks help individuals to find better-paid jobs with a new model, which ...

Social ties are strongly related to well-being. But what characterizes this relationship? This study investigates social mechanisms explaining how social ties affect well-being through social integration and social influence, and how well-being affects social ties through social selection. We hypothesize that highly integrated individuals – those with more extensive and dense friendship network...