Facilitating Intercultural Encounters with International Students: A Contribution to Inclusion and Social Network Formation

Higher education has become increasingly mobile and international, with many students taking the opportunity to study abroad during their studies. When they do so, forming and maintaining social networks is fundamental for their development of a sense of social inclusion. According to Coleman’s model of concentric circles, international students can establish networks with students from their own country (inner circle), with other international students (middle circle) and with local students (outer circle). This study explores various formats of organised student encounters in these three circles which contribute to the social inclusion of international students. The article is based on desk research of 15 formats of intercultural student encounters which facilitate social network formation during a study placement abroad in six countries in Europe. The findings show that all the studied formats of organised student encounters facilitate social networks in the middle and outer circles, while those in the inner circle are established by the students themselves and through informal social interaction. Formats embedded in the curriculum are most suited to facilitating social network formation throughout the academic year. Extracurricular formats, in contrast, tend to be single occasion activities without follow‐up. The study shows that universities can facilitate social network formation and assist social inclusion for international students through organised encounters in which international and local students meet. Organising such encounters does, however, require resources, evaluation, and adequate funding.

Contextual Factors That Enable and Restrain Social Network Formation of Dutch Erasmus+ Students

When studying abroad, international exchange students generally establish a new social network abroad. However, how international exchange students develop their social networks over time remains a blind spot in the academic literature. In this paper, we therefore analyze the initial formation and development of such networks among six Dutch Erasmus+ students. Starting from homophily theory, we particularly focus on the factors that enable and restrain initial social network formation and interaction patterns. Methodologically, we rely on a longitudinal qualitative approach, whereby we repeatedly interviewed these six students over time. Our findings reveal the importance of three main contexts in the initial social network formation of Erasmus+ students, namely the pre-mobility phase, the living place, and the social space. These findings provide insights for practitioners on which contexts to focus on when developing strategies to foster the integration of international exchange students at host institutions.

Social Networking Among Japanese Elders

The purpose of this study is to identify some of the predictors of social network formation with a focus on everyday behaviors such as greeting neighbors, attitudes about elder care, civic involvement, and hobby or social group membership. Using data from the 2010 and 2012 waves of the Japanese General Social Survey, we found that factors in which individuals have more control over are associated with the formation of social networks whereas factors that individuals have little to no control over are less likely to affect network formation. Specifically, elderly individuals who greet their neighbors and those who view elder care as an individual’s or family’s responsibility are more likely to have larger social networks. Likewise, civic engagement and participation in neighborhood associations are also significantly associated with forming social networks. Surprisingly, our analysis revealed that participating in hobby groups, length of residency in a community, and other control variables such as gender, income, and education are not significantly associated with forming social networks. Our findings indicate that the key components to building strong social networks are found within mundane daily activities. We conclude with several suggestions for how the elderly and communities can build elders’ social networks and thereby improve well-being. The implications of this study include raising awareness among individuals to prepare for a better, well-connected life in old age as well as suggesting local government programs for elderly care to help build more effective programs. Counselors could use this information to encourage their elderly clients to build social networks by increasing daily social interactions with neighbors and obtaining the view of self-reliance on elder care responsibility. Future researchers should seek to integrate the elder’s medical information in analyses in order to consider a comprehensive plan for the elderly’s well-being.

A meritocratic network formation model for the rise of social media influencers

Many of today’s most used online social networks such as Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, or Twitch are based on User-Generated Content (UGC), and the exploration of this content is enhanced by the integrated search engines. Prior multidisciplinary effort on studying social network formation processes has privileged topological elements or socio-strategic incentives. Here, we propose an untouched meritocratic approach inspired by empirical evidence on Twitter data: actors continuously search for the best UGC provider. We statistically and numerically analyze the network equilibria properties: while the expected outdegree of the nodes remains bounded by the logarithm of the network size, the expected indegree follows a Zipf’s law with respect to the quality ranking. Notably, our quality-based mechanism provides an intuitive explanation of the origin of the Zipf’s regularity in growing social networks. Our theoretical results are empirically validated against large data-sets collected from Twitch, a fast-growing platform for online gamers.

Victims, offenders and victim-offender overlaps of knife crime: A social network analysis approach using police records

Knife crime is a source of concern for the police in England and Wales, however little published research exists on this crime type. Who are the offenders who use knives to commit crime, when and why? Who are their victims, and is there a victim-offender overlap? What is the social network formation for people who are exposed to knife crime? Using a multidimensional approach, our aim is to answer these questions about one of England and Wales’ largest jurisdictions: Thames Valley. We first provide a state-of-the-art narrative review of the knife crime literature, followed by an analysis of population-level data on central tendency and dispersion of knife crimes reported to the police (2015–2019), on offences, offenders, victims, victim-offender overlaps and gang-related assaults. Social network analysis was used to explore the formations of offender-victim networks. Our findings show that knife crime represents a small proportion of crime (1.86%) and is associated largely with violence offenses. 16–34 year-old white males are at greatest risk of being the victims, offenders or victim-offenders of knife crime, with similar relative risks between these three categories. Both knife offenders and victims are likely to have a criminal record. Knife crimes are usually not gang-related (less than 20%), and experienced mostly between strangers, with the altercation often a non-retaliatory ‘one-off event’. Even gang-related knife crimes do not follow ‘tit-for-tat’ relationships—except when the individuals involved have extensive offending histories and then are likely to retaliate instantaneously. We conclude that while rare, an incident of knife crime remains predicable, as a substantial ratio of offenders and victims of future knife crime can be found in police records. Prevention strategies should not be focused on gang-related criminals, but on either prolific violent offenders or repeat victims who are known to the police—and therefore more susceptible to knife crime exposure.

Athlete Social Support Network Modeling Based on Modern Valence Bond Theory

Based on the Valence Bond theory, an attempt is proposed to the complex network. The principle of chemical bonding of the basic particles that make up the substance creates a metaphor between the formation of social networks. By analyzing the integration of atoms by relying on the chemical bonds between particles, then the social basis for the connection between social network nodes should depend on the tangible or intangible attribute resources that characterize social capital around the main node. Based on the above analysis, the social node is divided into active nodes and passive nodes, and a dynamic model of social network formation is proposed, the Valence Bond model of social network. Through this model, the actual athlete group nodes are depicted, and the representation of the model and the evolution of network structure are given with the actual data.

Intercultural guidance abroad

Contemporary research on language and intercultural learning during study abroad programs has led scholars to challenge the immersion assumption and to argue the need for interventions that would deepen and extend the learning potential of this experience (Jackson, 2018). In an attempt to underscore this point, this paper reports on an experimental study which explores the impact of a pedagogical intervention where two groups of Flemish students (n = 34) are tracked during their Erasmus stay in Spain. One group of students (n = 14) is enrolled in the intervention and encouraged to engage in linguistically and culturally challenging encounters while the other group is not (n = 20). Both language use and social network formation are examined through an extended version of the SASIQ questionnaire (Dewey et al., 2013), completed following their experience abroad. Although it is not straightforward to grasp the influence of such curricular initiatives on learner interaction and language contact abroad, results from the study are consistent with previous findings on the importance of fostering social interactions for L2 development. Furthermore, a number of social network variables also point out how L2 self-perceived progress can be fostered abroad.