Centrality in a social network is found to have a significant effect on Asch-type conformity. Friendship affinity and respect social network data was collected on two different groups of actors. The effects of Asch-type conformity were empirically tested on central actors and peripheral actors in each group using a culturally appropriate version of Asch’s test. Findings show that central actors...

Network models of collective action commonly assume fixed social networks in which ties influence participation through social rewards. This implies that only certain ties are beneficial from the view of individual actors. Accordingly, in this study we allow that actors strategically revise their relations. Moreover, in our model actors also take into account possible network consequences in th...

This paper argues that the agent-based simulation approach is just the one appropriate to the social sciences (including economics). Although there were many predecessor approaches, which tried to build formal models of social systems, all of them fell short of the peculiar features of the objects of all social sciences: complex systems consisting of numerous autonomous actors who interact with...

This study drew upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006, [1996]) visual grammar and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social semiotic model to interrogate ways through which social actors of different races are visually and textually represented in four award-winning English-learning software packages.  The analysis was based on narrative actional/reactional processes at the ideational level; mood, perspective, ...

This paper proposes that networks give actors a cover by giving them the excuse of sociability to engage in normatively prohibited market behaviors. I apply this hypothesis to actors in long-term exclusive relationships who are surreptitiously seeking new relationships without jeopardizing their current ones. I hypothesize that these actors will be drawn to social environments where others soci...

Four-, 6-, and 11-month old infants were presented with movies in which two adult actors conversed about everyday events, either by facing each other or looking in opposite directions. Infants from 6 months of age made more gaze shifts between the actors, in accordance with the flow of conversation, when the actors were facing each other. A second experiment demonstrated that gaze following alo...

This article discusses the role of giant social media corporations Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter in counter-terrorism countering violent extremisms (CT/CVEs). Based on a qualitative investigation mobilizing corporate communications as well collection interviews with European stakeholders, it argues that these firms have become actors this policy area what is traditionally considered h...

This study takes a critical discourse analysis approach to investigate the linguistic representation of male and female social actors and construction of gender identities in the Interchange Third Edition. The analytical models used are van Leeuwen's (1996) framework and Halliday's transitivity model (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). The findings of this study indicated a differential representat...

In social network analysis, the fundamental idea behind the notion of position is to discover actors who have similar structural signatures. Positional analysis of social networks involves partitioning the actors into disjoint sets using a notion of equivalence which captures the structure of relationships among actors. Classical approaches to Positional Analysis, such as Regular equivalence an...