scholarly journals Online Social Networks, Social Capital and Health-related Behaviors: A State-of-the-art Analysis

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Durst ◽  
Janine Viol ◽  
Nilmini Wickramasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Health Related Behaviors ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Art Analysis

scholarly journals Can Health 2.0 Address Critical Healthcare Challenges? Insights from the Case of How Online Social Networks Can Assist in Combatting the Obesity Epidemic

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janine Hacker ◽  
Nilmini Wickramasinghe ◽  
Carolin Durst
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Design Science ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Food Selection ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Obesity Epidemic ◽  
Health 2.0 ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Health Related

One of the serious concerns in healthcare in this 21st century is obesity. While the causes of obesity are multifaceted, social networks have been identified as one of the most important dimensions of people's social environment that may influence the adoption of many behaviours, including health-promoting behaviours. In this article, we examine the possibility of harnessing the appeal of online social networks to address the obesity epidemic currently plaguing society. Specifically, a design science research methodology is adopted to design, implement and test the Health 2.0 application called “Calorie Cruncher”. The application is designed specifically to explore the influence of online social networks on individual’s health-related behaviour. In this regard, pilot data collected based on qualitative interviews indicate that online social networks may influence health-related behaviours in several ways. Firstly, they can influence people’s norms and value system that have an impact on their health-related behaviours. Secondly, social control and pressure of social connections may also shape health-related behaviours, and operate implicitly when people make food selection decisions. Thirdly, social relationships may provide emotional support. Our study has implications for research and practice. From a theoretical perspective, the article inductively identifies three factors that influence specific types of health outcomes in the context of obesity. From a practical perspective, the study underscores the benefits of adopting a design science methodology to design and implement a technology solution for a healthcare issue as well as the key role for online social media to assist with health and wellness management and maintenance.

scholarly journals Role of the Built and Online Social Environments on Expression of Dining on Instagram

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vishwali Mhasawade ◽  
Anas Elghafari ◽  
Dustin T. Duncan ◽  
Rumi Chunara
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Health Related Behaviors ◽  
Health Related

Online social communities are becoming windows for learning more about the health of populations, through information about our health-related behaviors and outcomes from daily life. At the same time, just as public health data and theory has shown that aspects of the built environment can affect our health-related behaviors and outcomes, it is also possible that online social environments (e.g., posts and other attributes of our online social networks) can also shape facets of our life. Given the important role of the online environment in public health research and implications, factors which contribute to the generation of such data must be well understood. Here we study the role of the built and online social environments in the expression of dining on Instagram in Abu Dhabi; a ubiquitous social media platform, city with a vibrant dining culture, and a topic (food posts) which has been studied in relation to public health outcomes. Our study uses available data on user Instagram profiles and their Instagram networks, as well as the local food environment measured through the dining types (e.g., casual dining restaurants, food court restaurants, lounges etc.) by neighborhood. We find evidence that factors of the online social environment (profiles that post about dining versus profiles that do not post about dining) have different influences on the relationship between a user’s built environment and the social dining expression, with effects also varying by dining types in the environment and time of day. We examine the mechanism of the relationships via moderation and mediation analyses. Overall, this study provides evidence that the interplay of online and built environments depend on attributes of said environments and can also vary by time of day. We discuss implications of this synergy for precisely-targeting public health interventions, as well as on using online data for public health research.

scholarly journals A Novel Approach to the Measurement of Bourdieusian Social Capital within Institutional Pages and Profiles

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Alan Keller Gomes ◽  
Kaique Matheus Rodrigues Cunha ◽  
Guilherme Augusto da Silva Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Sequential Patterns ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The Social

We present in this paper a novel approach for measuring Bourdieusian Social Capital (BSC) within  Institutional Pages and Profiles. We analyse Facebook's Institutional Pages and Twitter's Institutional Profiles. Supported by Pierre Bourdie's theory, we search for directions to identify and capture data related to sociability practices, i. e. actions performed such as Like, Comment and Share. The system of symbolic exchanges and mutual recognition treated by Pierre Bourdieu is represented and extracted automatically from these data in the form of generalized sequential patterns. In this format, the social interactions captured from each page are represented as sequences of actions. Next, we also use such data to measure the frequency of occurrence of each sequence. From such frequencies, we compute the effective mobilization capacity. Finally, the volume of BSC is computed based on the capacity of effective mobilization, the number of social interactions captured and the number of followers on each page. The results are aligned with Bourdieu's theory. The approach can be generalized to institutional pages or profiles in Online Social Networks.

scholarly journals What Accounts for the Variation in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Eastern, Southern and Western Europe?

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimiter Toshkov
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Vaccination Campaigns

Attitudes towards vaccination have proven to be a major factor determining the pace of national COVID-19 vaccination campaigns throughout 2021. In Europe, large differences in levels of vaccine hesitancy and refusal have emerged, which are highly correlated with actual vaccination levels. This article explores attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination in 27 European countries based on data from Eurobarometer (May 2021). The statistical analyses show that demographic variables have complex effects on vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Trust in different sources of health-related information has significant effects as well, with people who trust the Internet, social networks and ‘people around’ in particular being much more likely to express vaccine skepticism. As expected, beliefs in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines have large predictive power, but – more interestingly – net of these two beliefs, the effects of trust in Internet, online social networks and people as sources of health information are significantly reduced. This study shows that the effects of demographic, belief-related and other individual-level factors on vaccine hesitancy and refusal are context-specific. Yet, explanations of the differences in vaccine hesitancy across Europe need to consider primarily different levels of trust and vaccine-relevant beliefs, and to a lesser extent their differential effects.

scholarly journals The role of internet-based social support network in immigrant settlement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Xiaoping Lin
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Acculturative Stress ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Support Networks ◽  
Support Network ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Online Social Support ◽  
The Government

This is an exploratory study on the roles that internet-based social networks play in supporting immigrants in their settlement process, using NewBridger as an example. This research finds that online social networks are able to provide informational, socio-emotional, and some material and instrumental support to immigrants that help meet their settlement needs. Information passed through NewBridger helps immigrants with employment, housing, education and training, leisure, and daily living related issues. Socio-emotional support helps reduce acculturative stress by fostering a sense of belonging and friendship, and by exchanging expressions of love, care and encouragement. Support for immigrants also takes the form of social capital building. This study concludes that online social support networks are valuable supplement to formal support networks consisting of the government and the non-profit sector. This study builds on the theoretical frameworks of social support, social capital and acculturative stress.

scholarly journals A Social Interaction Activity based Time-Varying User Vectorization Method for Online Social Networks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianyi Hao ◽  
Longbo Huang
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
User Modeling ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Time Varying ◽  
Self Similarity ◽  
Pairwise Interactions ◽  
User Data ◽  
Model Training

In this paper, we consider the problem of user modeling in online social networks, and propose a social interaction activity based user vectorization framework, called the time-varying user vectorization (Tuv), to infer and make use of important user features. Tuv is designed based on a novel combination of word2vec, negative sampling and a smoothing technique for model training. It jointly handles multi-format user data and computes user representing vectors, by taking into consideration user feature variation, self-similarity and pairwise interactions among users. The framework enables us to extract hidden user properties and to produce user vectors. We conduct extensive experiments based on a real-world dataset, which show that Tuv significantly outperforms several state-of-the-art user vectorization methods.

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