Does Virtuality Increase Social Capital within an Organization?

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between virtuality and social capital. Does virtuality decrease the strength of individuals’ social ties? Or does virtuality increase social capital by expanding the range of individuals’ social networks? To address these questions, first, we identify the properties of virtuality, whose definition still varies in a variety of research settings and at a variety of units of analysis. Second, we develop a conceptual framework that explores the links between virtuality and social capital. By combining the concept of weak ties from social network research and the notion of virtuality from the IS literature, we suggest a new perspective on virtual work: more virtuality leads to more social capital when the bridging relationships based on weak ties are maximized

High Dimensional Random Walks and Colorful Expansion

Random walks on bounded degree expander graphs have numerous applications, both in theoretical and practical computational problems. A key property of these walks is that they converge rapidly to their stationary distribution. In this work we {\em define high order random walks}: These are generalizations of random walks on graphs to high dimensional simplicial complexes, which are the high dimensional analogues of graphs. A simplicial complex of dimension $d$ has vertices, edges, triangles, pyramids, up to $d$-dimensional cells. For any $0 \leq i < d$, a high order random walk on dimension $i$ moves between neighboring $i$-faces (e.g., edges) of the complex, where two $i$-faces are considered neighbors if they share a common $(i+1)$-face (e.g., a triangle). The case of $i=0$ recovers the well studied random walk on graphs. We provide a {\em local-to-global criterion} on a complex which implies {\em rapid convergence of all high order random walks} on it. Specifically, we prove that if the $1$-dimensional skeletons of all the links of a complex are spectral expanders, then for {\em all} $0 \le i < d$ the high order random walk on dimension $i$ converges rapidly to its stationary distribution. We derive our result through a new notion of high dimensional combinatorial expansion of complexes which we term {\em colorful expansion}. This notion is a natural generalization of combinatorial expansion of graphs and is strongly related to the convergence rate of the high order random walks. We further show an explicit family of {\em bounded degree} complexes which satisfy this criterion. Specifically, we show that Ramanujan complexes meet this criterion, and thus form an explicit family of bounded degree high dimensional simplicial complexes in which all of the high order random walks converge rapidly to their stationary distribution.Comment: 27 page

Finding co-solvers on Twitter, with a little help from Linked Data

In this paper we propose a method for suggesting potential collaborators for solving innovation challenges online, based on their competence, similarity of interests and social proximity with the user. We rely on Linked Data to derive a measure of semantic relatedness that we use to enrich both user profiles and innovation problems with additional relevant topics, thereby improving the performance of co-solver recommendation. We evaluate this approach against state of the art methods for query enrichment based on the distribution of topics in user profiles, and demonstrate its usefulness in recommending collaborators that are both complementary in competence and compatible with the user. Our experiments are grounded using data from the social networking service Twitter.com

KC-Viz: a novel approach to visualizing and nNavigating ontologies

There is empirical evidence that the user interaction metaphors used in ontology engineering toolkits are largely inadequate and that novel interactive frameworks for human ontology interaction are needed. Here we present a novel tool for visualizing and navigating ontologies, called KC Viz, which exploits an innovative ontology summarization method to support a ’middleout ontology browsing’ approach, where it becomes possible to navigate ontologies starting from the most information-rich nodes (i.e., key concepts). This approach is similar to map-based visualization and navigation in Geographical Information Systems, where, e.g., major cities are displayed more prominently than others, depending on the current level of granularity

Native-speakerism revisited: Global Englishes, ELT and intercultural communication

The English language functions as a global lingua franca, and as the number of non-native speakers of English surpasses the number of native speakers of English, the ideology of native-speakerism is challenged. Viewing from the paradigm of Global Englishes (GE), English is no longer the sole property of its native speakers. This paper first discusses and presents a general picture regarding standard language ideology and the ideology of native-speakerism, and links the notion to how such ideas would exert an influence on teacher recruitment and intercultural communication in English language teaching (ELT). This paper then employs narrative inquiry from Chinese ELT professionals who have education experience abroad to reveal how they negotiate their professional identities in relation to privilege and marginalization when working with native English speaking colleagues. This paper argues for the importance of moving beyond the idealized native speaker model from the GE paradigm to challenge the ideology of native-speakerism in various aspects of ELT, in particular, in expanding circle contexts

Native-speakerism revisited: Global Englishes, ELT and intercultural communication

The English language functions as a global lingua franca, and as the number of non-native speakers of English surpasses the number of native speakers of English, the ideology of native-speakerism is challenged. Viewing from the paradigm of Global Englishes (GE), English is no longer the sole property of its native speakers. This paper first discusses and presents a general picture regarding standard language ideology and the ideology of native-speakerism, and links the notion to how such ideas would exert an influence on teacher recruitment and intercultural communication in English language teaching (ELT). This paper then employs narrative inquiry from Chinese ELT professionals who have education experience abroad to reveal how they negotiate their professional identities in relation to privilege and marginalization when working with native English speaking colleagues. This paper argues for the importance of moving beyond the idealized native speaker model from the GE paradigm to challenge the ideology of native-speakerism in various aspects of ELT, in particular, in expanding circle contexts

Introduction: Connecting Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment

With the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on gender equality and women’s empowerment, debates around empowerment of women find themselves at a critical juncture of donor preferences, programmatic and movement activity and the lived experiences of women. This introductory article summarises some of the primary debates surrounding women’s empowerment across three lines: economic empowerment and its links with poverty reduction – focusing on the intersections between paid work and unpaid care work; social empowerment in terms of changes in gender norms and values; and political empowerment and mobilisation. The interconnectedness of these three domains of empowerment is important to bear in mind while looking ahead – especially with high levels of intersecting inequalities and power structures that prevent the realisation of empowerment. We conclude that a process of collective notion of empowerment that focuses on addressing structural inequality and accords primacy to women’s own agency, would go a long way towards expanding women’s opportunities and choices – in other words, realising women’s empowerment in a meaningful way

Distance-Dependent Kronecker Graphs for Modeling Social Networks

This paper focuses on a generalization of stochastic Kronecker graphs, introducing a Kronecker-like operator and defining a family of generator matrices H dependent on distances between nodes in a specified graph embedding. We prove that any lattice-based network model with sufficiently small distance-dependent connection probability will have a Poisson degree distribution and provide a general framework to prove searchability for such a network. Using this framework, we focus on a specific example of an expanding hypercube and discuss the similarities and differences of such a model with recently proposed network models based on a hidden metric space. We also prove that a greedy forwarding algorithm can find very short paths of length O((log log n)^2) on the hypercube with n nodes, demonstrating that distance-dependent Kronecker graphs can generate searchable network models

The ‘imagined to the reimagined’ revival of learning in higher education

In 1998 education was declared ‘the best economic policy that we have’ (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1998) highlighting links between educational attainment and potential earning power. It was from this point on that widening participation became an integral part of what education policy was about. Importantly, alongside this notion comes the assumption that economic, social, political, and cultural injustices can be solved through education and up skilling. Offered as an opinion piece, for work that is on-going and expanding, this paper critiques the use of the most salient educational economic driver of the last 20-25 years, namely widening participation. This paper argues that the consequences of widening participation in higher education have been concealment of continuing social divisions, largely because they have been underpinned by neo-liberal rhetoric. It suggests counter-action through transgressive learning and teaching practice towards a consequence of remaking higher education that works more effectively for the disenfranchised and marginalised