It is widely established that the levels of generalized trust, norms of reciprocity, and identification (collectively known as relational social capital) in a virtual community have a positive effect on a member’s motivation to contribute knowledge in the community. However, little is known on the antecedents of such relational social capital. This study longitudinally investigates the effects ...

This position paper presents work in progress (within the first year) of the doctoral research into adoption of social collaborative e-learning in higher education. The research coins three concepts which intersect to form the fourth, social collaborative e-learning. These concepts are: informal learning, social networking and learning management. This paper explores the conceptual and theoreti...

objective: we measured concept of bridging social capital by a new tool . all items used in the scale are in agreement with the theoretical literature on this concept. method: the research method was survey. the sample population was 376 students of isfahan university which were sampled through cluster sampling of multiple stages. after making a list and confirming the validity of questions by ...

Modern Online Social Networks (OSNs) have many similarities. They use social ties, promote sharing and users get to vote or like content. Even their underlying structure is similar, tightly knit communities, power law distributions and the flow of information from stronger nodes to weaker, are prevalent in almost every network. Users spend time to maintain their online profile and therefore fil...

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association between collective efficacy at the class-level and i...

The effect of weather on social interaction has been explored through the analysis of a large mobile phone use dataset. Time spent on phone calls, numbers of connected social ties, and tie strength were used as proxies for social interaction; while weather conditions were characterized in terms of temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, and wind speed. Our results are based on the analysi...

In social networks, individuals constantly drop ties and replace them by new ones in a highly unpredictable fashion. This highly dynamical nature of social ties has important implications for processes such as the spread of information or of epidemics. Several studies have demonstrated the influence of a number of factors on the intricate microscopic process of tie replacement, but the macrosco...

Learning takes place in a social context, shaping and shaped by discourses. In online projects such as the Schome Park Programme, these discourses are material-semiotic practices (Haraway 1997) that make use of writing and other manifestations of digital literacies. Discourses include traceable patterns with linguistic features of distinctive forms and functions. Employing a sociocultural persp...

The social triad—a group of three people—is one of the simplest and most fundamental social groups. Extensive network and social theories have been developed to understand its structure, such as triadic closure and social balance. Over the course of a triadic closure—the transition from two ties to three among three users, the strength dynamics of its social ties, however, are much less well un...