PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Recently, location-based social networks, that involve both social and spatial information, have received much attention in many real-world applications such as location-based services (LBS), map utilities, business planning, and so on. User's location is one of the most important components of user context that implies extensive knowledge about an individual's interests and behavior, thereby providing researchers with opportunities to better understand users in a social structure according to not only online user behavior but also the user mobility and activities in the physical world. In this dissertation, we have an initial study of query processing over spatial-social networks and propose suitable solutions of query processing over spatial-social networks by proposing new novel queries that are Community Search (CS), Group Planning (GP), and Community Detection (CD) over the spatial-social network settings. For each proposed query over spatial-social networks, we have designed effective pruning strategies to reduce the search space by filtering false alarms, proposed effective indexing mechanisms to facilitate the query processing, and develop efficient query answering algorithms via index traversals. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed queries processing approaches.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2009, Social Welfare

This study examined predictors of perceived social support and support forrecovery of women with substance use disorders or co-occurring substance use and mental disorders. The sample consisted of 136 adult women; 86 women were engaged in inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment programs, and 50 women were recruited from a study of mothers with cocaine exposed infants. The women in the study were predominantly African American (82.4%) and of low income status with 80% of the women reporting an annual family income below $15,000. All of the women had a current substance use disorder and 77 (56.6%) of the women also had a co-occurring mental disorder including: Major Depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mania, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Hypomania, and Dysthymia. On average, women reported having a social network comprised of 10.73 members. A significant relationship was found between critical members (those who provide negative support) within women's social networks and perceived social support, with a higher percent of critical network members predicting lower perceived social support. Perceived social support scores were also significantly lower for women with a co-occurring mental disorder. Indirect relationships were found for women's perceived social support. The percent of professionals within women's social networks moderated the relationships between women's treatment motivation and treatment status with perceived social support. The percent of substance users in women's networks moderated the relationship between treatment motivation and perceived social support. A sub sample analysis of 86 women in substance abuse treatment explored predictors of support for recovery. A significant relationship was found between the percent of members who support sobriety and support for recovery. This finding provides construct validity for the support for recovery measure. Practice implications as well as directions for future research are included in (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Political Science

Social influence shapes the political opinions people form and the norms they adopt. I show that three key types of social networks drive the type of social influence people face: fully-connected deliberative networks, social hierarchies based on status, and star networks that group up around a central opinion leader. In chapter one, I lay the foundation for thinking of public opinion as emerging from people's social structures. I then apply the theory to international norm adoption and show that the type of network an individual is placed in has a direct effect on the norms they adopt, over and above partisanship. In chapter two, I use a custom-made Twitter-like environment to show experimentally that hierarchies foster the adoption of partisan-leaning norms as members pursue status. Stars, in contrast, inoculate their members against false claims due to the reputations costs opinion leaders face in misleading their followers. In chapter three, I expand on these findings by priming subjects in a survey experiment with an image of their social structure, and show that placing a political independent in a social hierarchy at the individual-level makes them favor U.S. isolationism, international competition in domains such as trade, and overall unilateralism on the world stage. The conclusion of these two studies is clear: social hierarchies prime competitive political thinking, often leading to the adoption of norms based on false premises, and star networks help their followers sift through the noise and misinformation that prevails in online fully-connected networks. These findings highlight the importance of viewing norm adoption and opinion formation as a social endeavor that is deeply influenced by one's reference network. As online social networks continue to expand, identifying the types of networks that characterize these social environments becomes imperative for students of public opinion and international relations that seek to understand why some norms an (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science in Sport Studies, Miami University, 2010, Physical Education, Health, and Sport Studies

This paper examines the role of social support and its affect on athletic injury rehabilitation. The study utilized a semi-structured interview structure on six previously injured Division I athletes. Results were analyzed using qualitative methodology looking for emergent themes and sub-themes. It was originally thought a social network of supporting roles was crucial for injured athletes' recovery. However, with the current results, it is now evident that social networks are but a small fraction of the process. This study concludes with future research directions.

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2005, Graduate School

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Environment and Natural Resources

Departing from literature on social-ecological fitness and social-ecological network analysis, this dissertation explores the degree to which social-ecological theory reflects underlying social processes of issue engagement and partnership evaluation and identifies pathways for future research to engage practitioners with social-ecological network data. In total, the research presented in this dissertation shows that social-ecological network analysis and theory can both be strengthened by participant engagement and qualitative analyses and can be translated into actionable information that practitioners can use to inform their management decisions. This research – which includes three consecutive empirical studies (chapters 2 through 4) – presents one of the first comprehensive accounts of confirming social-ecological network theory with participant populations. Each of the three chapters seeks to determine how practitioners navigate social-ecological interdependence by assessing whether practitioners' strategies align with social-ecological motifs that are commonly used in empirical network analyses (i.e., small-scale network structures that impart theoretically important processes). Further, all three empirical chapters analyze separate components of a dataset pertaining to climate change adaptation governance in Columbus, Ohio, which is a system comprised of over one hundred unique stakeholder organizations, 19 climate adaptation-related issues, and their interconnections. In the first chapter, I explore how community-engaged network tools can help to overcome fragmentation in environmental governance systems. I helped to develop a network tool that offers personalized partnership recommendations to practitioners that would close “collaborative gaps,” which are instances where two actors who manage the same issue(s) fail to collaborate with one another. Results from focus group conversations with practitioners suggest that engaged network tools can be 1) hampere (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Sociology

Historically and in the present, immigration looms large in the American consciousness. Today, we find ourselves in a challenging moment, struggling with political polarization alongside key questions about the causes and consequences of immigration. In this contemporary context, I explore the views that Americans hold about immigration, which may in turn impact immigrant integration. I then explore how first, second, and third-generation immigrants experience national and transnational social ties with attention to their health impacts. Broadly speaking, my dissertation seeks to understand how proximity to the immigrant experience is an important marker of group change. Since a large number of Americans are immigrants or have parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents who are or were immigrants, understanding variability in the ideas or stereotypes that Americans hold with respect to contemporary immigration is crucial to understanding how today's immigrants will be incorporated into the fabric of American life. To that end, I collect and analyze original survey data through the American Population Panel (APP) to first examine variability by generation in how Americans view immigrants in today's climate (Chapter Two). I find that generation is an important predictor of views towards immigration, but generation matters less for how individuals perceive diversity. Next, I use the commentary associated with my original APP survey to understand the thought processes and ideas that respondents invoke when presenting their views of immigration (Chapter Three). I find that oftentimes respondents cannot separate immigration from illegality, with politics, nationalism, and mistrust combining to create archetypes that respondents superimpose on immigrants broadly. Last, I conduct interviews with first, second, and third-generation immigrants in order to characterize the social ties that immigrants hold, how these ties inform their experiences in both the U.S. and in t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Weatherhead School of Management

This mixed-methods study examined what factors drive student success among undergraduate business students and using that knowledge to promote positive academic outcomes for all students. The literature posits that academic engagement is associated with high performance levels (Fredin, Fuchsteiner, & Portz, 2015; Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2006; Pace, 1980). However, engagement does not work alone in predicting success. Many other significant factors predict higher engagement levels. According to Karki, Chaudhury, and Patangia (2020), the interplay of external variables alongside individual or psychological aspects of students leading to academic engagement is still not fully understood. This study begins to address this knowledge gap. Using a sequential explanatory design, data were collected in two phases: a qualitative phase followed by a quantitative phase. Phase I consisted of qualitative interviews of twenty-eight participants from a private liberal arts college. The questions explored what factors they felt contributed most to their college success during a first-year accounting sequence. The most significant finding was that all participants reported some form of social support as essential for their success level and necessary for their belief that they could succeed in accounting. A quantitative study was then conducted using a hypothesized model to explore the causal relationships of cohort support and family support on engagement as mediated by self-esteem. The quantitative results were positively correlated between both forms of support and engagement and between competence and engagement. A mediating role for self-esteem was also proven between social support and engagement. The quantitative and qualitative data illustrate variables such as social support and self-esteem predict higher levels of engagement and ultimately positive academic outcomes.

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Environment and Natural Resources

Modern environmental problems pose unique management challenges since they are usually interdependent in myriad, complex ways. Climate change is the ultimate example of a problem that forces environmental managers to confront highly interdependent challenges, such as invasive species, rising temperatures, and habitat loss. A growing area of interest in understanding complex, polycentric governance systems has been to analyze the engagement of stakeholders in policy issues and the participation of stakeholders in policy forums. In this thesis, I focus on climate change adaptation governance in Ohio, USA as a model study system to evaluate conditions and incentives that drive actors to manage for interdependent issues or to participate in forums in ways that are collectively beneficial. To answer questions about actor management strategies in complex, polycentric governance arrangements, I analyze climate change governance as a three-mode network of interrelations among actors, forums, and policy issues related to climate change adaption in Ohio. I draw upon the Ecology of Games Theory (EGT) and an Institutional Fitness framework to formulate hypotheses that uncover the conditions, incentive structures, and attributes that prompt actors to engage with issues and participate in forums in ways that promote adaptive capacity. Chapter 2 tests whether actors are likely to simultaneously manage environmental policy issues that are highly interdependent (such as nutrient management and water quality, which are connected through the process of eutrophication). Then, Chapter 3 tests for how different types of theorized closure structures (i.e., unique situations of actor benefits) – lead actors to participate in decision-making forums. To tackle the questions at hand, both chapters utilize Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs), which is a tool for inferential network analysis. The results indicate that actors are more likely to manage for pairs of interdependent polic (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2021, Political Science

The 2019 Mueller Report revealed a campaign by the Russian Internet Research Agency to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and insert systemic distrust in Western democracy. The campaign engaged in “information warfare” using false accounts, or bots, to prey on inherent social vulnerabilities that are amplified by the novelty and anonymity of social media, such as echo chambers and the rapid spread of fake news. This thesis explores the aims, methods, effects, and behavioral patterns of bots. It also proposes BotWise, a model designed to distill average behavior on the social media platform Twitter from a set of real users and compare that data against novel input.

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2020, Environment and Natural Resources

Harmful algal blooms (HABs), have been a growing issue in Lake Erie since the 1990s. The blooms, composed of toxin-producing cyanobacteria, are primarily caused by nutrient runoff in the form of phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural lands around the Lake. HABs in Lake Erie have become an especially salient issue after the August 2014 Toledo Water Crisis, in which 500,000 people in the Toledo Metropolitan Area were deprived of the use of their tap water due to a `do not drink' advisory prompted by toxins in the water originating from a HAB. In drawing an explosion of attention to HABs, the 2014 algal bloom functioned as a focusing event. A focusing event is an event, concentrated in a particular geographical area, that causes harm or reveals the potential for harm to human communities. To understand how the 2014 Toledo Water Crisis affected policy change processes implicated in managing Lake Erie, I investigate two issues pertaining to how this attention changed HAB management: first, the ways the crisis changed the social networks of the stakeholders involved in water quality management; and second, the ways that the crisis altered narratives about HABs. To address HABs, coordination across jurisdictions and the various levels of government is essential. Actors faced with these fragmentations of management built into government face a collective action problem and must coordinate their actions to compensate for this fragmentation. Understanding how the 2014 algal bloom as a focusing event altered social networks associated with water quality management in Lake Erie will help reveal the conditions under which coordination and collective action may arise. As a part of this process of addressing HABs, narrative will also be an important aspect. Policy debates are fought using narrative, and narrative affects the policy process. Understanding the narratives actors employ at a moment in which quickly mobilizing resources and people is essential can elucidate how acto (open full item for complete abstract)

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Computer Science

Impossibility theorems in social choice have represented a barrier in the creation of universal, non-dictatorial, and non-manipulable voting rules, highlighting a key trade-off between social welfare and strategy-proofness. However, a social planner may be concerned with only a particular preference distribution and wonder whether it is possible to better optimize this trade-off. To address this problem, we propose an end-to-end, machine learning-based framework that creates voting rules according to a social planner's constraints, for any type of preference distribution. After experimenting with rank-based social choice rules, we find that automatically-designed rules are less susceptible to manipulation than most existing rules, while still attaining high social welfare.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Sociology

Racial inequality persists in American society and, thus, scholars have called for systematic analyses of the mechanisms and processes that reproduce racial differences in access to resources, opportunity, and power. Using data collected from 121 leaders and 684 members of diverse churches, I investigate the role of race in how leaders access and mobilize social capital and how these processes influence the formation of friendships. While racial integration increases the social proximity of racial and ethnic minorities to resource-rich networks, the ability to access those networks is limited by the social ties that people form. Drawing upon an in-depth analysis of qualitative interviews, I first find that white men form social networks that facilitate interracial sharing and opportunity hoarding and, in comparison to white women and people of color, experience greater access to resources through personal, community, and institutional networks. My second empirical chapter examines how and why leaders develop diversity initiatives for their congregations using a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. I find that while white leaders promote equality and diversity, they also commodify the social value of race and ethnicity to generate resources from their social networks. In the final empirical chapter, I conduct a multilevel analysis examining how diversity strategies and other organizational factors shape the diversity and strength of friendships that form within multiracial churches. I find that increasing the proportion of paid leaders of color is the only diversity strategy that positively associates with increased diversity of member networks. Further investigation reveals that churches who receive funding for being diverse are less racial integrated and that race moderates the strength of close ties. These findings of this dissertation suggest the need for further investigation into the racial mechanisms that influence the social capital of leaders and (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Applied Communication Theory and Methodology, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

With the rise of technology it becomes important to measure and analyze the communication patterns that are emerging from these changes. Technologies open up different communication patterns for individuals to use (Tomas & Carlson 2015; Walther, 1996; Wei & Leung, 1999). Thus, this study develops the “ASOHIO” perspective, which incorporates a range of new and old communication patterns, online communication, offline communication, synchronous communication, asynchronous communication, interpersonal communication, and hyperpersonal communication. This work also looks to extend the hyperpersonal model greatly by developing an actual multi-item scale to measure the construct at the individual level. Walther's (1996) basic description of hyperpersonal communication breaks down that there are a lack of non-verbal cues, a sense of strategic communication, and computer-mediated communication. This study takes things a step further, with a breakdown of the components of hyperpersonal taking into account current technologies, as well as using Goffman's “presentation of everyday self“ and “interaction ritual” to help define what hyperpersonal could really mean in the current hybrid communication environment.

Master of Gerontological Studies, Miami University, 2018, Gerontology

Older adults are the fastest growing group to adopt and use social media. Social media allows individuals to remain socially connected when face-to-face contact becomes difficult. Previous research shows happiness may spread through face-to-face social networks. Since older adults may experience changes in their social networks over time, examining whether happiness is also related to online networks is important to understand. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the use of multiple social media sites and happiness among n=870 adults age 45 years and older. Data from the 2016 wave of the General Social Survey was used to conduct cross-sectional binary logistic regression analyses. Fifty-six percent of participants used at least one social media site. Findings indicate the two predictor variables of interest (amount of time spent on the internet/web-enabled applications and number of social media sites used) had no significant relationship with happiness. Happiness was significantly related to number of children, marital status, total family income, and having a graduate degree. Future research in this area can develop new theories and explore how happiness is derived through a network by comparing an individual's in-person and online network.

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Social Routing in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is very challenging, as it must handle privacy and performance. This study proposes a Social Online Routing (SOR) protocol for OSNs that satisfies Stratified Privacy Model (SPM) core requirements and minimizes end-to-end routing delays corresponding to the social routing information elements exchanged under the SPM. SOR uses five messages (I-need Message, I-have Message, I-thank Message, I-like/dislike message, and the I-Ack Message) for carrying routing information. Forwarding models (I-need Module, I-have Module, I-thank Module, and I-ack Module) and routing algorithms (Topology aware Shortest-Path-Based routing algorithm, Social-Priority-Based routing algorithm, and Queue-aware Social-Priority-Based routing algorithm) are introduced. Four anonymization techniques are also utilized for stratified privacy. To evaluate the study's proposed protocol, an Online Social Networks Simulator is designed and implemented. Using real datasets from Google Plus, the simulator is used to evaluate end-to-end routing delays corresponding to the social routing information elements exchanged under the SPM.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2018, Leadership and Change

The purpose of this study was to develop a resilient network ambidexterity scale. While numerous research efforts have considered the dimensions of social capital, resilience, and adaptive capacity to evaluate organizations and communities, few have explored social network indicators within organizations that can be used to mobilize ambidextrous strategies during times of disruption. The emphasis here was to understand the tendencies and behaviors that networks possess to sustain or achieve success along the parallel strategies of optimization and exploration. This study progressed in three specific phases toward filling this void in organizational development literature, using a mixed-methods approach. Phase 1 was the development of the item pool and analysis of the scale to establish face and content validity. Phase 2 included administering an online survey to 344 participants. Data collected were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, followed by a partial confirmatory factor analysis These revealed a two-factor solution central to identifying resilient network ambidexterity: Optimizing Organizational Boundaries and Exploring Novelty. Phase 3 involved getting feedback on the revised scale from organizational leaders and practitioners working in innovative fields to refine the final RNA instrument. This research made connections between resilience and ambidexterity in organizations through ongoing inquiry on ways that fusing distinct paradigms impacts organizational outcomes. The development of this scale can serve as a useful tool for organizations to assess their level of resilience and mobilize the features of optimization and exploration. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/

BA, Kent State University, 2015, College of Communication and Information / School of Communication Studies

Since the recent exit of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert from their shows that topped the genre of political satire (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), little research has been done about the new shows primed to take their spot, including Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (LWT). LWT brings an interesting addition to the genre: its frequent social-media focused call to actions given at the end of longer, in-depth reporting segments. While political participation among the viewers of political satire has been researched before, the measures have focused on traditional forms of participation, rather than newer forms of participation via social media. These newer forms may better reflect participation patterns of the young adult population, which these shows have a large following from. Students from a large, Midwestern university received a video clip of a segment of LWT with or without the call to action (or no clip at all) using a between subjects experimental design. The results of this study suggest that shows like LWT can increase viewers' intent to participate politically through social networks, even after viewing only a single clip. Results also suggest humor may play an important motivating role.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Higher Education Administration

The purpose of this qualitative, interview-based study was to use the framework of social capital to explore how 15 LGBTQ+ student leaders of LGBTQ+ identity-based student groups described the impact of serving in those leadership roles on their sense of engagement and belonging with their university community. Using a constructivist paradigm, I sought a better understanding of how participants understood their own social capital within the university community and how they constructed the meaning of those relationships. I used a constructivist design and analyzed interviews, observations, and documents related to the topic. Participants identified as part of the LGBTQ+ community, all had at least one semester of positional leadership experience in an LGBTQ+ student group, and all were either currently enrolled undergraduate students at the research site or within one year of graduation. I used a semi-structured interview protocol and conducted one interview, lasting between 45-minutes and two hours, with each participant. I gained an understanding of the participants' described experience as LGBTQ+ student leaders of LGBTQ+ identity-based student groups and how they interacted with their campus community. Four major themes emerged: (1) gaining social capital; (2) being a visible leader; (3) experiencing changing relationships; and (4) participating in the interactive campus. Through serving in these leadership positions, student leaders gained social capital granted to them by their institution and created by their positional leadership role; they gained capital within their own organization; and they joined two larger social networks of people working for social justice and of student leaders. Participants experienced the campus as highly visible and prominent student leaders. This reputation granted them access to circles denied to others and allowed them to develop instantaneous rapport with people they did not know directly. This visibility came wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Psychology

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a psychological disorder that effects mostly women (75%) and is characterized by symptoms that may impact social networks such as intense anger, emotional instability, impulsivity, unstable interpersonal relationships, and fears of abandonment. Furthermore, distress resulting from interpersonal events is related to serious consequences such as self-harm and suicide attempts for those with BPD. Despite the clear disruption in the interpersonal domain, and the severe associated outcomes, few research attempts have been made to understand the social networks of women with BPD and how they may differ from the networks of others. In the present study, we aimed to do this using a longitudinal design to compare the social networks of women with BPD and a group of age and education matched healthy control women. Participants recruited from the community and local clinics were assessed at a baseline evaluation and completed follow-up questionnaires one and three months later. The effect of group on perceptions of social network quality, composition, and stability was examined. Women in the BPD group reported less satisfaction and support and more conflict and criticism from network members than healthy control women. Further, those diagnosed with BPD had social networks that were more variable in terms of these same characteristics. The BPD group reported having fewer partners at baseline and more relationships in which there had been a significant rupture or change in the past month. The effect of group on stability of network perceptions over time was significant, but the two groups did not differ in dropout rates over three-months. These results inform our understanding of the social dysfunction experienced by individuals with BPD by clarifying the nature of unstable relationships. Specifically, while those with BPD reported having lower quality relationships and more change in how they viewed their partners over time (open full item for complete abstract)