Paradise Paradox: Constructing a Digital Nomad Community

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-112
Author(s):  
Rachael A. Woldoff ◽  
Robert C. Litchfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Online Networks ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Physical Isolation ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
New Type ◽  
Permanent Residency

This chapter addresses the paradox of self-initiated “location-independent” nomads in search of a face-to-face community but also a community with minimal obligations. Research has examined how technology has transformed work and social relationships in physical and virtual communities. The chapter reviews this literature and adds to it by explaining how digital nomads construct place-based communities. Though specialized online networks can provide access to like-minded individuals, it is lonely to work on a laptop in physical isolation. Digital nomads respond to the shortcomings of both traditional and online communities by living in digital nomad hubs characterized by both fluidity and intimacy. These two characteristics of nomad hubs make this a new type of place-based community that violates many traditional views found in the sociological literature, which tend to emphasize kin networks, permanent residency, and social contracts and obligations tied to various institutions.

Do Virtual Communities Have an Effect on the Social Network of Cancer Patients?

2013 ◽  
pp. 72-84
Author(s):  
Jan Marco Leimeister ◽  
Karin Janina Schweizer ◽  
Helmut Krcmar
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Virtual Relationships

This chapter presents the results of a study that investigates the determinants and effects of virtual communities on the development of social relationships within the social network of cancer patients. Influencing factors on the formation of virtual relationships and their effect in the form of social assistance are researched. Following an explorative approach, it is examined whether online communities meet their theoretical potential to provide an environment where social relationships can be established that help cancer patients to cope with their situation. The study shows that virtual relationships for patients are established in VCs and play an important role in meeting patients’ social needs. Important determinants for the formation of virtual relationships within virtual communities for patients are general internet usage intensity (active posting vs. lurking) and the perceived disadvantages of CMC. We also found that virtual relationships have a strong effect on virtual support of patients; more than 61% of the variance of perceived social assistance of cancer patients was explained by cancer-related VCs. Emotional support and information exchange delivered through these virtual relationships may help patients to better cope with their illness. Deduced from these results, recommendations for patients using online communities and providers administrating online communities are outlined.

The Social Consequences of Phubbing

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariek Vanden Abeele
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Expectancy Violations ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Comprehensive Literature Review ◽  
The Social

Recent empirical work suggests that phubbing, a term used to describe the practice of snubbing someone with a phone during a face-to-face social interaction, harms the quality of social relationships. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this chapter presents a framework that integrates three concurrent mechanisms that explain the relational impact of phubbing: expectancy violations, ostracism, and attentional conflict. Based on this framework, theoretically grounded propositions are formulated that may serve as guidelines for future research on these mechanisms, the conditions under which they operate, and a number of potential issues that need to be considered to further validate and extend the framework.

scholarly journals Dealing with disagreement: The depolarizing effects of everyday diplomatic skills face-to-face and online

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482199304
Author(s):  
Carla Anne Roos ◽  
Namkje Koudenburg ◽  
Tom Postmes
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Online Chat ◽  
Face To Face

In online text-based discussions, people behave less diplomatically because they are more outspoken and less responsive. This can feed impressions of polarization. This article uses a new methodology to isolate the influence of outspokenness and responsiveness in shaping perceptions of polarization in online chat and face-to-face discussions. Text-based online and face-to-face discussions were reproduced in a face-to-face format (Study 1) and in a text-based chat format (Study 2). Uninformed observers (N = 102 and N = 103, repeated measures) evaluated these. The results showed that responsiveness was generally considered indicative of agreement and good social relationships but the interpretation of outspokenness (or lack of ambiguity) depended on the medium format. This suggests that what counts as diplomacy is not the same for each medium. Moreover, the experiences of the actors reproducing the chats in a face-to-face format highlighted the differences between media. We conclude that online conversational dynamics may play an important role in societal polarization.

scholarly journals Pandemic and Social Work: Exploring Finnish Social Workers’ Experiences through a SWOT Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Harrikari ◽  
Marjo Romakkaniemi ◽  
Laura Tiitinen ◽  
Sanna Ovaskainen
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Swot Analysis ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Thematic Content Analysis ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
New Type

Abstract This article addresses the experiences of Finnish frontline social workers during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Two questions are addressed. First, ‘what types of challenges social work professionals faced’ in their everyday, ‘glocal’ pandemic setting and, second, what types of solutions they developed to meet these challenges. The data consist of 33 personal diaries that social work professionals created from mid-March to the end of May 2020. The diaries are analysed by a thematic content analysis and placed within the framework of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. The results suggest that the pandemic challenged social work at all levels, from face-to-face interactions to its global relations. The pandemic revealed not only the number of existing problems of social work, but also created new types of challenges. It demanded ultimate resilience from social workers and a new type of adaptive governance from social welfare institutions.

scholarly journals How May Virtual Communication Shape Cooperation in a Work Team?

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Flache
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Work Teams ◽  
Work Team ◽  
Online Interaction ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Virtual Communication ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Interaction Task ◽  
Simulation Results

AbstractThis paper addresses theoretically the question how virtual communication may affect cooperation in work teams. The degree of team virtualization, i.e. the extent to which interaction between team members occurs online, is related to parameters of the exchange. First, it is assumed that in online interaction task uncertainties are higher than in face-to-face contacts. Second, the gratifying value of peer rewards is assumed to be lower in online contacts. Thirdly, it is assumed that teams are different in the extent to which members depend on their peers for positive affections, operationalized by the extent to which team members are interested in social relationships for their own sake, independently from their work interactions. Simulation results suggest both positive and negative effects of team virtualization on work-cooperation.

‘Story of one’s life and a tree of friends’ – understanding millennials’ information behaviour in social networks

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 489-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Read ◽  
Chirag Shah ◽  
Lupita S-O’Brien ◽  
Jaqueline Woolcott
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Space ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Comprehensive Literature Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rich Data ◽  
Work Supports

Exploring ways in which new technology impacts adolescents’ information behaviours and creates a social space requires holistic investigation. A qualitative study of 21 seniors in an upper-middle-class suburban high school revealed highly individualized use of Facebook and its features. These included: (i) Friends groups of 50—3700 members, with even the largest groups representative primarily of face-to-face connections, and (ii) a clear articulation within those groups of various categories, each with its own distinct communicative channel and style. A meaningful connection was found between the social value of various social network (SN)-mediated relationships and the communicative modes used to maintain and enhance them. Through a comprehensive literature review and clearly grounded analysis of rich data, this work supports the contention that adolescent social groups in which SNs are embedded form a distinct domain, and establishes a rationale for further investigation of adolescents’ contextualized use of SNs within social relationships.

Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Lonsdale
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
National Movements ◽  
New Type ◽  
First Time ◽  
Official Recognition

This paper attempts to provide a frame of reference for evaluating the role of ordinary rural Africans in national movements, in the belief that scholarly preoccupation with élites will only partially illumine the mainsprings of nationalism. Kenya has been taken as the main field of enquiry, with contrasts and comparisons drawn from Uganda and Tanganyika. The processes of social change are discussed with a view to establishing that by the end of the colonial period one can talk of peasants rather than tribesmen in some of the more progressive areas. This change entailed a decline in the leadership functions of tribal chiefs who were also the official agents of colonial rule, but did not necessarily mean the firm establishment of a new type of rural leadership. The central part of the paper is taken up with an account of the competition between these older and newer leaderships, for official recognition rather than a mass following. A popular following was one of the conditions for such recognition, but neither really achieved this prior to 1945 except in Kikuyuland, and there the newer leaders did not want official recognition. After 1945 the newer leadership, comprising especially traders and officials of marketing co-operatives, seems everywhere to have won a properly representative position, due mainly to the enforced agrarian changes which brought the peasant face to face with the central government, perhaps for the first time. This confrontation, together with the experience of failure in earlier and more local political activity, resulted in a national revolution coalescing from below, co-ordinated rather than instigated by the educated élite.

Emergent Cultural Differences in Online Communities’ Norms of Fairness

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pontus Strimling ◽  
Seth Frey
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
World Of Warcraft ◽  
Social Outcomes ◽  
Multiplayer Games ◽  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Social Contracts

Unpredictable social dynamics can dominate social outcomes even in carefully designed societies like online multiplayer games. According to theories from economic game theory and evolutionary anthropology, communities that are otherwise identical can spontaneously develop emergent cultural differences. We demonstrate the emergence of norm diversity in comparable populations distributed across identical copies of a single multiplayer game world. We use 2006 data from several servers of World of Warcraft to analyze how social contracts about resource distribution converge within independent communities, while varying across them. We find wide-ranging diversity in the norms that communities consider standard, fair, and common, even where these norms are unenforcable and players face large incentives to deviate from them. By documenting how designed societies come to differ in undesigned ways, we present emergent cultural diversity as a distinguishing feature of human sociality and a major challenge for game designers.

Epidemic Response: Follow-up and lessons learned from the US response to the evolving and conflicting risk information, focusing on education and clinical environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1584-1587
Author(s):  
Alison G. Vredenburgh ◽  
Gail L. Sunderman ◽  
Rodrigo J. Daly Guris ◽  
Sreekanth R. Cheruku
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hospital Systems ◽  
Clinical Environments ◽  
New Type ◽  
Response Decisions ◽  
Epidemic Response

In this follow-up panel, we discuss what we have learned over the last year about responding to an epidemic or pandemic that has demonstrated a level of transmission unprecedented in the modern era. Two medical doctors that have worked on the front of this pandemic share their experiences transitioning from the “sharp end” of the response. Decisions about how to mitigate hazards have occurred at the personal, institutional, and health policy levels, in real-time, with frequent adaptation, and often in advance of concrete evidence. Over the course of the pandemic, hospital systems revised existing protocols to manage perceived risks in real time using emerging information from other centers. With the introduction of vaccines, there is a new type of risk perception. Is the vaccine perceived to be safe? Is there a disparity in perception among different population groups? That said, analyses are also complicated by emerging viral mutations with unclear implications. What factors increase or decrease public compliance with precautions? How are US education policymakers deciding about face-to-face classroom instruction? This panel includes a warnings expert, an expert on education policy, and two practicing physicians.

Small Worlds, Material Culture and Ancient Near Eastern Social Networks

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Coward
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Social ◽  
Agricultural Societies

The cognitive, psychological and sociological mechanisms underpinning complex social relationships among small groups are a part of our primate heritage. However, among human groups, relationships persist over much greater temporal and spatial scales, often in the physical absence of one or other of the individuals themselves. This chapter examines how such individual face-to-face social interactions were ‘scaled up’ during human evolution to the regional and global networks characteristic of modern societies. One recent suggestion has been that a radical change in human sociality occurred with the shift to sedentary and agricultural societies in the early Neolithic. The discussion presents the results of a focused study of the long-term development of regional social networks in the Near East, using the distribution of different forms of material culture as a proxy for the social relationships that underpinned processes of trade, exchange and the dissemination of material culture practices.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document