Industry centrality: weak ties, industry attributes, and managerial contracting

This chapter suggests that the graduate students sometimes approached weak ties because they were avoiding strong ones, and that the heart of their reservations lay in the possibility of incompatible expectations—in the potential discordance between different roles that those they were close to might expect to perform. It begins by explaining that the students maintained different kinds of strong ties and confided in people with whom they had different kinds of relationships. The former can be classified by their degree of institutional mediation; the latter, by the extent of emotional reciprocity. Institutional mediation introduced additional expectations to a relationship; emotional reciprocity, when it was lacking, created the possibility of ambiguity. Both factors shaped how reluctant students were to approach those to whom they were close when they needed to discuss particular topics.

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Confidants

10.1093/oso/9780190661427.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Mario Luis Small

Keyword(s):

Graduate Students ◽

Weak Ties ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Strong Ties ◽

The Subject

This chapter reviews the literature that probed people’s decisions about whom to turn to when they need a confidant and discusses reasons for considering an alternative. It first provides a historical overview of research on the subject before analyzing how the claim that people will turn to those they are close to when they have important matters to discuss is linked to the ideas about the differences between strong and weak ties. It also cites three reasons to doubt the notion that people will turn to strong ties when seeking confidants as consistently as they say they do. The chapter concludes by explaining the rationale for studying the experiences of graduate students who were forced to make decisions about whom to talk to when they needed someone to talk to.

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Weak ties matter: Social network dynamics of mobile media multiplexity and their impact on the social support and psychological well-being experienced by migrant workers

Mobile Media & Communication ◽

10.1177/20501579211001106 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 205015792110011

Author(s):

Piper Liping Liu ◽

Tien Ee Dominic Yeo

Keyword(s):

Social Support ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Well Being ◽

Weak Ties ◽

Mobile Media ◽

Strong Ties ◽

Psychological Well Being ◽

The Social ◽

Media Multiplexity ◽

Mobile Ict

This study investigates the contextual and relational characteristics that underlie people’s information and communication technology (ICT) use and the implications for their well-being. We contextualize this investigation according to migrants, because they are faced with disruptions to their personal networks in the migration process that may attenuate the availability of social support and negatively affect their mental health. Migrants tend to be proficient in using mobile ICT to connect with different social ties to fulfill their needs, which potentially makes a difference to their psychological well-being. Through a survey of 504 internal migrant workers in China, we examined the social network factors that underlie multiple mobile ICT use and the attendant influences on social support and psychological well-being. Redressing the overemphasis on the importance of strong ties in extant literature, this study highlights the salience of mobile media multiplexity (i.e., the use of multiple mobile communication channels for social interactions) in weak tie communication and the greater contribution of weak ties toward social support and psychological well-being than strong ties. Our findings suggest that mobile-mediated communicative relationships with newer and more distanced social connections outside their immediate circles enhance the well-being of migrants. We contend that media multiplexity vis-à-vis weak ties underscores the reconfiguration of migrants’ communicative relationships following the separation from original ties and facilitates rewarding interactions with new ties.

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Community-based disaster communication: how does it become trustworthy?

Disaster Prevention and Management An International Journal ◽

10.1108/dpm-02-2016-0026 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 478-491 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Dwie Irmawaty Gultom

Keyword(s):

Disaster Response ◽

Information Diffusion ◽

Weak Ties ◽

Network Ties ◽

Community Based ◽

Strong Ties ◽

Content Type ◽

Individual Level ◽

Disaster Communication ◽

Disaster Information

Purpose – Trust in disaster communication is significant because a lack of trust will prevent the transformation of information into usable knowledge for an effective disaster response. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture and network ties of an affected community can encourage trust and participation in disaster communication. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative case study of Jalin Merapi (JM) was conducted by interviewing 33 research participants in the Mt Merapi surroundings. Findings – The findings indicate that culture-embedded disaster communication plays important roles in increasing the effectiveness of disaster information and encouraging trust in the authenticity of locally based disaster information at the individual level. The findings also identify that strong ties and weak ties play different roles in disaster communication. The strong ties are more effective in facilitating information diffusion and encourage trust and community participation within the affected community. Furthermore, the weak ties are more effective in disseminating information to wider audiences, and have an indirect influence in encouraging trust by extending the offline social network owned by the affected community. Originality/value – Most literature on disaster communication focusses on the construction of disaster messages to encourage effective disaster response. Less attention has been paid to the information receivers regarding how disaster information is considered to be trustworthy by the affected community and how it can increase collective participation in community-based disaster communication.

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Cultural Differences in the Hedonic Rewards of Recalling Kindness: Priming Cultural Identity with Language

Affective Science ◽

10.1007/s42761-020-00029-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 80-90

Author(s):

Lilian J. Shin ◽

Seth M. Margolis ◽

Lisa C. Walsh ◽

Sylvia Y. C. L. Kwok ◽

Xiaodong Yue ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Cultural Identity ◽

Emotional Experience ◽

Chinese Language ◽

Well Being ◽

Cultural Identities ◽

Weak Ties ◽

Recent Theory ◽

Emotional Experiences ◽

The Usa

AbstractRecent theory suggests that members of interdependent (collectivist) cultures prioritize in-group happiness, whereas members of independent (individualist) cultures prioritize personal happiness (Uchida et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 223–239 Uchida et al., 2004). Thus, the well-being of friends and family may contribute more to the emotional experience of individuals with collectivist rather than individualist identities. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants to recall a kind act they had done to benefit either close others (e.g., family members) or distant others (e.g., strangers). Study 1 primed collectivist and individualist cultural identities by asking bicultural undergraduates (N = 357) from Hong Kong to recall kindnesses towards close versus distant others in both English and Chinese, while Study 2 compared university students in the USA (n = 106) and Hong Kong (n = 93). In Study 1, after being primed with the Chinese language (but not after being primed with English), participants reported significantly improved affect valence after recalling kind acts towards friends and family than after recalling kind acts towards strangers. Extending this result, in Study 2, respondents from Hong Kong (but not the USA) who recalled kind acts towards friends and family showed higher positive affect than those who recalled kind acts towards strangers. These findings suggest that people with collectivist cultural identities may have relatively more positive and less negative emotional experiences when they focus on prosocial interactions with close rather than weak ties.

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