this study tries to review the reasons for which young girls tend to perform beauty surgeries on their faces, within the framework of veblen’s “theory of the leisure class” and his “social models” such as fiscal ownership. the statistical society has been the girl students of the university of tehran selected through snow ball sampling and discourse analysis was applied to analyze the semi-stru...

In this workshop paper we describe a preliminary study of collaboration practices among social scientists. Based on interviews with 10 social science researchers we describe how they rely on local networks as well as very tight-knit international communities. Their technology use differed according to need and particularly opportunity. Author

Integration or replacement of existing software systems is inevitable after company mergers and other types of collaborations between organizations. Our present research aims at describing how organizations have accomplished new generations of their existing systems by integrating, merging, or reusing parts of existing systems, be it code, design ideas, or requirements. As an important part of ...

Students report drinking for social reasons, yet the social benefits of alcohol use are less understood. Associations between social drinking motives, drinking behaviors, and college friendships were examined via in-person interviews with 72 college freshmen from a large Midwestern University. Social drinking motives were significantly associated with drinking behaviors; however, drinking behav...

The use of social media has revolutionized the internal and external communications and management of many businesses. This paper discusses the various social media platforms in the context of UK building societies. Many companies from the banking sector are utilizing social media, and in some this is outpacing traditional methods of marketing and internal communication. The main aim of this re...

Individuals often form preferences through search, interviews, discussion, and investigation. Endogenizing information acquisition in a stylized object allocation problem, we demonstrate that learning decisions depend on the incentives provided by the chosen allocation rule with important consequences for individual and social welfare. In particular, top trading cycles rules dominate serial pri...

Current videoconference systems combine face-to-face (F2F) and mediated interactions. We extend the use of a Social Presence measure to a real-world setting combining co-located and remotely located people completing a collaboration activity. Comparisons between physically present and remotely located others did not indicate significant differences in social presence regarding media condition. ...

A qualitative research wave has swept through the social sciences during the last decades. Interviews, textual analyses and natural observations have come into widespread use as modes of inquiry. The qualitative research movement is interdisciplinary, and an opening of the social sciences to the humanities has taken place, drawing on hermeneutics, as well as narrative, discursive, conversationa...

BACKGROUND Long-term recipients of social assistance face barriers to social and economic inclusion, and have poorer health and more limited opportunities for improving their health than many other groups in the population. During recent decades there have been changes in Swedish social policy, with cutbacks in public benefits and a re-emphasis on means-tested policies. In this context, it is i...

Organizations aiming to foster civic engagement, such as government bodies, news outlets, political parties, and NGOs, struggle to purposefully use social media to engage young people. To respond to this challenge we conducted five group-interviews with 27 youth, 16–26 years, about their experiences of and barriers to civic engagement in social media. Our paper contributes to identifying specif...