Investment in infrastructure is recognized as a key enabler of economic prosperity, but it is also important for addressing social and environmental challenges, including climate change mitigation and addressing fuel poverty. The UK Government Strategy Investing in Britain’s Future argues that significant investment in “resilient, cost effective and sustainable energy supplies” is needed to mee...

Many recent approaches to modeling social networks have focussed on embedding the actors in a latent “social space”. Links are more likely for actors that are close in social space than for actors that are distant in social space. In particular, the Latent Position Cluster Model (LPCM) [1] allows for explicit modelling of the clustering that is exhibited in many network datasets. However, infer...

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the extent social media is enabling e-democracy in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The study conducts an interpretative case study approach interviewing active social media users, political actors, civil servants, civilians, civil society actors and tertiary students. The study also conducts a content analysis of popular “political social media” Facebook pages i...

Social capital designs the ensemble of resources which are accessible to a social actor through its relationship with other actors [1]. As such, social capital is always embedded in a social network, where nodes represent actors (e.g. individuals, political groups, associations), and links represent relationships (e.g., friendship, common interests, hostility) [2]. Social networks are inherentl...

We examine three hypotheses at the foundation of theories concerned with the organization of social space and social solidarity in differentiated groups. The most important of these hypotheses is that interpersonal ties between actors in different positions of a social structure foster social solidarity; however, the theories are silent on the question of whether this effect of interpersonal ti...

In a recent book I reviewed the development of social network analysis from its earliest beginnings until the late 1990s (Freeman, 2004). There I characterized social network analysis as an approach that involves four defining properties: (1) It involves the intuition that links among social actors are important. (2) It is based on the collection and analysis of data that record social relation...

This research examines the spread of criminal behavior and hard drug consumption using a mathematical approach called cellular automata (CA). This CA model is based on two behavioral concepts. Firstly, peer association impacts criminal involvement. Secondly, addiction can heighten criminal activity. The model incorporates four types of actors who interact in a high-risk social community and one...

The theory of social diagnosis recognizes two principles: 1) extra-medical social structures frame diagnosis; and 2) myriad social actors, in addition to clinicians, contribute to diagnostic labels and processes. The relationship between social diagnosis and (de)medicalization remains undertheorized, however, because social diagnosis does not account for how social actors can also resist the pa...

Social networking using social media has fundamentally changed the way people maintain friendship networks, and the way people interact and communicate with others on their social networks. Traditional research on social networking uses associations between or relationships among actors. Using a sociomateriality perspective in this paper, we address calls to the IS research community to explore...

We draw from theories of institutions and collective identities to present a threefold framework of institutional change—involving institutional logics, resources, and social actors—that furthers our understanding of the mitigation of corruption. Those social actors intent on reforming corruption function as institutional entrepreneurs, and their success depends both on articulating an anticorr...