Browsing by Subject "social networks"
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Item Board Interlocks and the Diffusion of Strategic Actions(2014-04-10) Lamb, Nai HuaResearch on the diffusion of strategic actions through board interlocks has mainly focused on the dyad level, meaning the one-on-one relations between a focal firm and its interlocked firm. The structural embeddedness of a firm and the characteristics of the interlocking director on the diffusion of strategic actions have received little scholarly attention. Drawing from a social network perspective, I first examine how duration of an interlock can influence the diffusion of strategic actions. In this dissertation, I specifically focus on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in emerging markets as the strategic action of interest. Next, I turn to the theory of triads in structural sociology and examine the influence of a closed triad. I theorize that Simmelian ties formed in a closed triad facilitate diffusion. I then propose the influence of the number of cliques in which both the focal firm and its interlocked firm are embedded. I also theorize how a sending board?s influence can increase the diffusion of M&As in emerging markets, whereas a receiving board?s access to information can decrease the diffusion. Finally, I explore the influence of interlocking directors. I specifically focus on the influence of the interlocking director?s position on either board (as a chair), tenure on the receiving board, and ownership in the focal firm. I tested my hypotheses with public firms from 2001 to 2012 and limited the emerging markets to BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). I found evidence in support of five of my hypotheses. My results show that the duration of an interlock, the number of cliques in which embedded by both firms, the sending board?s influence, and whether an interlocking director is a chair on either board are positively associated with the focal firm?s implementation of M&As in emerging markets following the interlocked firm; whereas the receiving board?s access to information predicted the opposite direction. I then discuss the implications, opportunities for future research, and limitations of my dissertation. My main theoretical contributions are to extend social network theory and to provide a multi-level theory of board interlocks and the diffusion of strategic actions.Item The effects of social networks and social support on the relationship between race/ ethnicity and disability in older adults(2010-09-20) Jacqueline M Hirth; M. Kristen Peek; Rebeca Wong; Mukaila Raji; Kyriakos Markides; Jacqueline AngelObjectives: Researchers have begun to focus on social resources, including social\r\nsupport and social networks, as being important to health. Especially in the case of race\r\nand ethnic differences in disability among older adults, social resources are important to\r\nconsider because they may be able to help explain some of the gap in disability that exists\r\nbetween groups. This study describes the effects of social support and social networks on\r\ndisability in older whites, blacks and Mexican Americans. Methods: In this study, two\r\nsets of longitudinal data were used to conduct the analyses, including the Hispanic\r\nEPESE (1993-2007) which represents older Mexican Americans 65 years and older\r\n(N=3,050), and the Duke EPESE (1986-1992), that consists of older blacks and whites 65\r\nyears and older (N=4,316). Generalized linear mixed models were used to analyze the\r\nchange in disability across time, and discrete-time hazard analysis estimated with logistic\r\nregression was used to analyze the risk of developing disability and recovery between\r\nVII\r\nintervals of data collection. Results: Social support was associated with decreased\r\ndisability among blacks and whites; however, contrary to hypotheses, social support was\r\nassociated with increased disability across time among Mexican Americans (with the\r\ninclusion of depressive symptoms in the models). In addition, social support partially\r\nmediated the association between race and disability. Focusing on social networks, the\r\nresults showed that social network size is associated with decreased disability across time\r\nin all groups and with greater recovery among blacks and whites. A higher proportion of\r\nfriends was associated with less disability across time among Mexican Americans and a\r\ndecreased risk of developing disability among blacks and whites. Conclusions: This\r\nstudy illustrates the complex nature of social support and social networks and how each\r\naffects disability in diverse populations. Depression plays an important role in the\r\nassociation between social support and disability among Mexican Americans, and health\r\nis also important in the association between social support, social networks, and disability\r\nin all three groups. In the future, researchers should consider the sociocultural context of\r\nsocial support and social networks in investigating health disparities in disability.Item How New Media is Used for Issues Management(2012-01-10) Steel, Melanie; Vardeman-Winter, Jennifer; Heath, Robert; Ni, Lan; Liu, YoumeiThis study expands on strategic issues management literature by examining how new communication technologies, especially social networking, are used for the purpose of managing organizational issues. An Issues Typology is also presented in this study in the attempt to categorize overarching types of issues as well as recognize what types of issues are important to organizations. Guided by relevant literature in Internet communication, public relations and issues management, a grounded theory analysis of in-depth interviews with 20 communicators and public relations practitioners revealed the overall relationship between the utilization of new media and the practice of issues management. These results provide rich insight into to public relations practitioners’ utilization of new media, actual issues management practices within organizations, the relationship between new media and issues management, and organizational definitions of an issue. Additionally, this study provides insight into the challenges that communicators face when utilizing new communication technologies. Overall, these results show that although practitioners have significant limitations in employing issues management through new media, they believe there are a number of outlets for issues management through these channels and have a strong desire to implement them.Item Local Experts in Social Media(2013-12-04) Bachani, VandanaThe problem of finding topic experts on social networking sites has been a continued topic of research. This thesis addresses the problem of identifying local experts in social media systems like Twitter. Local experts are experts with a topical expertise that is centered around a particular location. This geographically-constrained expertise can be a significant factor for enhanced answering of local information needs (What is the best pub in College Station?), for interacting with local experts (e.g., in the aftermath of a disaster), and for accessing local communities. I developed a local expert finding system ? called OLE (online local experts) ? that leverages the crowd sourced location-topic labels provided by users of the popular Twitter service. Concretely, I mine a collection of 108 million tweets for evidence of local topics of discussion occurring with user-mentions and location pairs; based on this collection, I developed a learning-to-rank approach that incorporates topic-location entropy and a local expert perimeter for varying the expertise focal window. In comparison with alternative expert finding approaches, I find that OLE is quite effective in finding local experts and achieves a 37.72% increase in mean average precision and a 16.8% increase in NDCG scores, across a comprehensive set of queries.Item Mexican-Origin Interregional Migration from the Southwest: Human, Household, and Community Capital Hypotheses(2010-01-16) Siordia, CarlosThis research addresses the question of what factors lead Mexican-origin individuals living in the U.S. to seek a new residence outside their Southwestern state of residence. The analysis examines three hypotheses: (1) the human capital hypothesis that college graduates have higher odds of migrating out of the core region than those with less than a high school education; (2) the household social capital hypothesis that posits that the presence of a household member born outside the core increases the odds of migration; and (3) the community social capital hypothesis which states that householders residing in an area with community social capital will have higher odds of leaving the core than those living in areas with no community social capital. These hypotheses are investigated using three models: (1) a full model that includes both native- and foreign-born Mexican-origin householders; (2) a native-born model which includes only native-born Southwest householders; and (3) a foreign-born models that includes only foreign-born Mexican-origin householders. By using the Saenzian region-concepts of core, periphery, and frontier, I find: (1) limited support for the human capital hypothesis; (2) consistent support for the household social capital; and (3) no support for the community social capital. The analysis is important to sociological theory and demography because it specifically endeavors to explain how the connections between three kinds of capital?human, household, and community?shape the decision to leave the Southwest for other regions of the country. By computing statistical and theoretical particulars, the thesis ascertains that migration-selectivity theories regarding the general population are useful in theorizing Mexican-origin interregional migration. Findings expand existing sociological literature by theorizing how human, household, and community capital operate under the Saenzian regions to shape the interregional migration of the growing Mexican-origin population of the U.S.Item Needs Assessment of Agricultural, Environmental, and Social Systems of Small Farmers in Chimaltenango, Guatemala(2011-02-22) Oleas, CarolinaProviding support for the agricultural development of small farmers is the main goal of the project Agriculture in Guatemala: Technology, Education and Commercialization (AGTEC). To accomplish this, it is necessary, to identify the characteristics and needs of participants, as well as their environmental, social, and farming conditions. Through this study, two case studies were conducted to identify and analyze the context of small farmers of the region. This research study used qualitative and participative methods, such as interviews, focus groups, and observation, to gather data about the participants' thoughts and opinions concerning their situations. The case study systemically gathered information about the conditions and needs of small farmers to provide a better understanding of the people and their interactions within the farm systems. This needs assessment showed how the farmers' decisions about adoption are related to their interactions on their farms. Therefore, this study analyzed the system, as a whole, to identify priorities among different critical components that will provide optimum results for beneficiaries. These priorities will allow the identification of appropriate technologies that will satisfy the needs of small farmers according to their local, cultural, and economic conditions. The appropriate technologies need to be diffused among the farmers for adoption. Rogers observed that technologies that are diffused by opinion leaders are adopted by their peers. Thus, the second case study analyzed the social networks and their leaders to observe their potential to support the diffusion process of technologies. The study revealed the presence of diverse social networks, one provided by the political structure, others based on organized groups of farmers and other informal networks formed by independent farmers. Data also showed that opinion leaders have desired roles and characteristics among their networks. Therefore diffusion of innovations through formal and non-formal leaders represents a promising strategy as they are recognized and respected by peers. The diffusion of innovations through opinion leaders promotes the active participation of local members, validates the innovations, and sustains adoption over time. Therefore, the analysis of the social networks and selection of opinion leaders supports the diffusion process of the AGTEC project in Chimaltenango, Guatemala.Item Playing Hide-and-Seek with Spammers: Detecting Evasive Adversaries in the Online Social Network Domain(2012-10-19) Harkreader, Robert ChandlerOnline Social Networks (OSNs) have seen an enormous boost in popularity in recent years. Along with this popularity has come tribulations such as privacy concerns, spam, phishing and malware. Many recent works have focused on automatically detecting these unwanted behaviors in OSNs so that they may be removed. These works have developed state-of-the-art detection schemes that use machine learning techniques to automatically classify OSN accounts as spam or non-spam. In this work, these detection schemes are recreated and tested on new data. Through this analysis, it is clear that spammers are beginning to evade even these detectors. The evasion tactics used by spammers are identified and analyzed. Then a new detection scheme is built upon the previous ones that is robust against these evasion tactics. Next, the difficulty of evasion of the existing detectors and the new detector are formalized and compared. This work builds a foundation for future researchers to build on so that those who would like to protect innocent internet users from spam and malicious content can overcome the advances of those that would prey on these users for a meager dollar.Item Racializing the Migration Process: An Ethnographic Analysis of Undocumented Immigrants in the United States(2011-08-06) Molina, Hilario 1972-From the exterior, the United States has extracted natural resources and transformed the social dynamics of those living on the periphery, contributing to the emigration from Mexico and immigration to the United States. This,in turn,creates the racialization of the Mexican immigrant, specifically the undocumented immigrant?the "illegal alien." I argue that this unilateral interaction operates with a racial formation of the Mexican immigrant created by elite white (non-Hispanic) males. The anti-Mexican immigrant subframe and "prowhite" subframe derive from the white racial frame,which racializes the undocumented immigrant in the United States. In addition, the subframes are evident in the three stages of migration. The three stages consist of threefold factors: First, the exploitation of Mexican resources (natural and human) and racialized immigration policies; second, the social networks and smugglers, called coyotes, who assist the undocumented immigrant to bypass barriers; and third, the discrimination undocumented immigrants encounter in the United States by other people of color. This dissertation relied on the migration experience of thirty Mexican male day-laborers,living in Texas, to examine the white racial framing of undocumented immigrants. The findings demonstrate how the U.S. immigration policies and members of the host society persistently exhibit the white racial frame and its subframes. This study is essential, because, aside from noting the issues of unauthorized migration, it demonstrates how elite white males shape the dialogue on the discourse and all that surrounds the migration process.