This study explores the impact of Social Network Sites (SNSs) usage on the formation of online bridging and bonding social capital, and the relationship between online and offline social capital. It is hypothesized that use of SNSs forms online social capital and online and offline social capital are positively correlated. A Chinese SNS, Renren, is studied specifically. Social capital scales an...

Background and Objectives: A blood distribution network orchestrates distribution of safe blood products to hospitals. Blood shortage and blood wastage are two important factors which may affect efficiency of blood distribution network. Service delivery time is another factor that refers to the time interval between blood request by a hospital and transfusing it to the patient....

Difference and diversity are phenomena existing from the very first days human communities have been formed. Under such condition, what provides for necessity of coexistence between different individuals and groups to become possible is tolerance. On the other hand, wide range development in terms of communication and providing information are going on in today’s world. This evolution called by...

The technological revolution of the past two decades has changed communication in contemporary higher education settings. Consequently, there is now a wide gulf between the unlimited use of technology and higher education, particularly with respect to digital communications and the rapid increase in the use of social media in instructional applications. Technology offers college students an arr...

The emergence of social media and their wide usage have brought changes in almost all fields of public sphere. Nowadays governmental organizations, agencies and politicians use social media in order to ensure major civil participation, enhance e-dialogue and e-democracy consequently, emphasizing thus in participatory processes through which opinions are co-shaped and decisions are jointly made....

This study examines the hypothesis that aspects of social relations moderate the relationship between SES and health; that is, this association varies with differences along four major dimensions of social relations: instrumental, emotional, and negative support, and network structure. In 1992, 923 white and black respondents aged 40 and over were interviewed as part of the Survey of Social Rel...

Social network sites (SNSs) are new communication channels with which people can share information. Social networks are also connected to gaming. Hence, gaming is quickly becoming one of the most popular categories of applications on SNSs. The goal of this project is to gain insight into the factors that affect user intention to use a social network games. The present study uses an extended tec...

This paper introduces an unobtrusive method and distributed solution set to aid users of on-line social networking sites, by creating a trusted environment in which every member has the ability to identify each other within their private social network by name, gender, age, location, and the specific usage patterns adopted by the group. Utopia protects members by understanding how the social ne...

Higher education has traditionally been notorious for the inefficient use of data to improve the quality and the value of graduates in meeting market needs. The amount of data available to higher education sector surpasses their utilization opportunities, in the wake of big data field emergence. Managing, processing and analyzing these large volumes of data prompted the establishment of learnin...