BibSonomy: a social bookmark and publication sharing system

Social bookmark tools are rapidly emerging on the Web. In such systems users are setting up lightweight conceptual structures called folksonomies. The reason for their immediate success is the fact that no specific skills are needed for participating. In this paper we specify a formal model for folksonomies and briefly describe our own system BibSonomy, which allows for sharing both bookmarks and publication references in a kind of personal library.

Rural households’ social capital and welfare: A case study of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In a household or nations production system, social capital has been recognized as an input having major implications for project design as well as policy development. Using a structured questionnaire, household level data was obtained from a representative sample of 300 rural households in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal. This study employed the conventional household economic behaviour model under constrained utility maximisation to examine the effect of social capital on the welfare of household, testing the hypothesis that the possession of social capital improves household welfare. The result shows that social capital endowments have a statistically significant positive effect on household welfare, in addition to the some household’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The study concluded that, access to social capital among other factors, is very crucial for improved rural household welfare and poverty reduction. It is therefore important for government to have knowledge of existing social groups and networks as this will improve the effectiveness of the present strategies aimed at reducing poverty.

How Death Guides Human Behavior - The Role of Cultural Norms and Values in Terror Management Theory

Die Dissertation besteht im Wesentlichen aus zwei Teilen: der Synopse und einem empirischen Teil. In der Synopse werden die Befunde aus dem empirischen Teil zusammengefasst und mit der bisherigen Forschungsliteratur in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Im empirischen Teil werden alle Studien, die für diese Dissertation durchgeführt wurden, in Paper-Format berichtet. Im ersten Teil der Synopse werden grundlegende Annahmen der Terror Management Theorie (TMT) dargelegt—mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf die Mortalitätssalienz (MS)-Hypothese, die besagt, dass die Konfrontation mit der eigenen Sterblichkeit die Motivation erhöht das eigene Weltbild zu verteidigen und nach Selbstwert zu streben. In diesem Kontext wird auch die zentrale Rolle von Gruppen erklärt. Basierend auf diesen beiden Reaktionen, wird TMT Literatur angeführt, die sich auf bestimmte kulturelle Werte und soziale Normen bezieht (wie prosoziale und pro-Umwelt Normen, materialistische und religiöse Werte, dem Wert der Ehrlichkeit, die Norm der Reziprozität und deskriptive Normen). Darüber hinaus werden Randbedingungen, wie Gruppenmitgliedschaft und Norm-Salienz, diskutiert. Zuletzt folgt eine Diskussion über die Rolle von Gruppen, der Funktion des Selbstwerts und über Perspektiven einer friedlichen Koexistenz. Der empirische Teil enthält elf Studien, die in acht Papern berichtet werden. Das erste Paper behandelt die Rolle von Gruppenmitgliedschaft unter MS, wenn es um die Bewertung von anderen geht. Das zweite Manuskript geht der Idee nach, dass Dominanz über andere für Sadisten eine mögliche Quelle für Selbstwert ist und daher unter MS verstärkt ausgeübt wird. Das dritte Paper untersucht prosoziales Verhalten in einer Face-to-Face Interaktion. Im vierten Paper wird gezeigt, dass Personen (z.B. Edward Snowden), die im Namen der Wahrheit handeln, unter MS positiver bewertet werden. Im fünften Paper zeigen zwei Studien, dass MS dazu führt, dass mögliche gelogene Aussagen kritischer beurteilt werden. Das sechste Paper zeigt, dass der Norm der Reziprozität unter MS stärker zugestimmt wird. Das siebte Paper geht der Frage nach, inwiefern MS das Einhalten dieser Norm beeinflusst. Und schließlich wird im achten Paper gezeigt, dass MS die Effektivität der Door-in-the-Face Technik erhöht—eine Technik, die auf der Norm der Reziprozität basiert.

Social Inequality and Social Policy outside the OECD

Almost all Latin American countries are still marked by extreme forms of social inequality – and to an extent, this seems to be the case regardless of national differences in the economic development model or the strength of democracy and the welfare state. Recent research highlights the fact that the heterogeneous labour markets in the region are a key source of inequality. At the same time, there is a strengthening of ‘exclusive’ social policy, which is located at the fault lines of the labour market and is constantly (re-)producing market-mediated disparities. In the last three decades, this type of social policy has even enjoyed democratic legitimacy. These dynamics challenge many of the assumptions guiding social policy and democratic theory, which often attempt to account for the specificities of the region by highlighting the purported flaws of certain policies. We suggest taking a different perspective: social policy in Latin American should not be grasped as a deficient or flawed type of social policy, but as a very successful relation of political domination. ‘Relational social analysis’ locates social policy in the ‘tension zone’ constituted by the requirements of economic reproduction, demands for democratic legitimacy and the relative autonomy of the state. From this vantage point, we will make the relation of domination in question accessible for empirical research. It seems particularly useful for this purpose to examine the recent shifts in the Latin American labour markets, which have undergone numerous reforms. We will examine which mechanisms, institutions and constellations of actors block or activate the potentials of redistribution inherent in such processes of political reform. This will enable us to explore the socio-political field of forces that has been perpetuating the social inequalities in Latin America for generations.

Influencia social y uso del preservativo en la prevención de la transmisión heterosexual del VIH = Social influence and condom use for VIH heterosexual transmission prevention

Se revisan diferentes formas en que la influencia social puede incidir sobre los comportamientos heterosexuales de prevención de la transmisión del VIH de los jóvenes y se presentan los resultados de algunos trabajos de las autoras, así como de otros investigadores, en que se analizan dichas relaciones. Se concluye resaltando: 1) la utilidad clínica de la evaluación de las expectativas de autoeficacia para poder intervenir específicamente en aquellas áreas en que los jóvenes se perciban con menores capacidades para ser preventivos, 2) la relación observada entre el uso de preservativo autoinformado y la creencia en su aceptación por parte de los referentes sociales más cercanos y 3) la conveniencia de que los jóvenes posean suficientes habilidades de comunicación que les permitan negociar con éxito el uso del preservativo y les ayuden a compensar posibles influencias sociales en contra de su empleo

Teams make it work : How team work engagement mediates between social resources and performance in teams

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Achievement goals, social goals, and motivational regulations in physical education settings

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Social Networks and Small World phenomena

Social Networking tools like Facebook yield recognisable small world phenomena, that is particular kinds of social graphs that facilitate particular kinds of interaction and information exchange.

Social Networks and Actors

A discussion about Actor Network Theory

Drug Administration: rules and regulations for health care practitioners

These narrated slides explain the roles, responsibilites and practicalities in administering drugs. Although it has been developed with student nurses and midwives in mind it will be of use to students of all health care professions.

Review: Social Media and Abstract Nouns

The revision slides for our Social Media course, contains major lessons learned throughout the course, and an example exam question (on trust).

On social networks and game theory, some research problems

Seminar given as part of social networking course, to give a brief overview of some applied examples game theory used in social network simulation

Contemporary Social Movements and the Web

Social Movements are decentralising in the modern world. Web 2.0 has driven latency structures in social movements, and made activism more personal than ever before, but it has also introduced the concept of slacktivism. Micro-Macro relationships are becoming important theoretical frameworks for Social Movement research on the Web - has the Global Justice Movement of 1999 become Global Justice Networks in 2013?

Social participation and protagonism: Reflections fron the Conference of the Rights of Children’s and adolescent in Brazil

This paper examines the children and young people's participation and protagonism rights based on the Conferences on Children and Adolescents Rights' experience in Brazil, based on childhood sociology. Conferences' documents were consulted on the Brazilian government websites. These study findings revealed that young people's participation has increased in the last conferences. However, it is necessary to promote a systematic and genuine participation through democratic relations construction in all development contexts where childrenand adolescent live in order to modify their life and society participative practices.