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The goal of this analysis was to obtain local citation behavior data on undergraduates researching history, political science, and sociology papers. The study found that students cited books and journals even with the availability of web sources; however, usage varied by subject. References to specific websites' domains also varied across subject area. Most of the top journal titles that students referenced were online and locally owned. Students cited a broader range of journal titles than predicted by the Law of Scattering and cited titles across a wide array of subject areas. This data helped identify potential gaps in the library's collection and services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While social media offer great communication opportunities, they also increase the vulnerability of young people to threatening situations online. Recent studies report that cyberbullying constitutes a growing problem among youngsters. Successful prevention depends on the adequate detection of potentially harmful messages and the information overload on the Web requires intelligent systems to identify potential risks automatically. The focus of this paper is on automatic cyberbullying detection in social media text by modelling posts written by bullies, victims, and bystanders of online bullying. We describe the collection and fine-grained annotation of a cyberbullying corpus for English and Dutch and perform a series of binary classification experiments to determine the feasibility of automatic cyberbullying detection. We make use of linear support vector machines exploiting a rich feature set and investigate which information sources contribute the most for the task. Experiments on a hold-out test set reveal promising results for the detection of cyberbullying-related posts. After optimisation of the hyperparameters, the classifier yields an F1 score of 64% and 61% for English and Dutch respectively, and considerably outperforms baseline systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of power through the study of the structuration and retrieval of information on the internet. The main argument of the paper is that, paradoxically, in an age when the availability of information has increased exponentially, there is a risk that diversity in the use of sources for the construction of knowledge becomes more restricted than in the past and that information search moves towards greater objectification and centralisation. Knowledge management systems increasingly shape the ways in which we think about the questions we ask and how we try to answer them, which raises fundamental and largely neglected questions for education policy. The paper illustrates these trends with particular reference to the use of Google and Google Scholar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations should measure their information security performance if they wish to take the right decisions and develop it in line with their security needs. Since the measurement of information security is generally underdeveloped in practice and many organizations find the existing recommendations too complex, the paper presents a solution in the form of a 10 by 10 information security performance measurement model. The model—ISP 10×10M is composed of ten critical success factors, 100 key performance indicators and 6 performance levels. Its content was devised on the basis of findings presented in the current research studies and standards, while its structure results from an empirical research conducted among information security professionals from Slovenia. Results of the study show that a high level of information security performance is mostly dependent on measures aimed at managing information risks, employees and information sources, while formal and environmental factors have a lesser impact. Experts believe that information security should evolve systematically, where it’s recommended that beginning steps include technical, logical and physical security controls, while advanced activities should relate predominantly strategic management activities. By applying the proposed model, organizations are able to determine the actual level of information security performance based on the weighted indexing technique. In this manner they identify the measures they ought to develop in order to improve the current situation. The ISP 10×10M is a useful tool for conducting internal system evaluations and decision-making. It may also be applied to a larger sample of organizations in order to determine the general state-of-play for research purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growth of the World Wide Web has conic a proliferation of online reference sources. Some of these are electronic versions of already existing paper sources, while others have no paper counterpart. Many of the best reference resources found of the Web are subscription-based, but a surprising number of quality resources are available free. The vastness of the Web makes it difficult to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive survey of all the resources that are currently available. This article attempts to identify sonic of the most significant resources across the social sciences. it includes six disciplines: anthropology, communications, history, political science, and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maternal mortality is still very high in Africa, despite progress in control efforts at the global level. One elemental link is the question of autonomy in maternal health, especially at the household level where intrinsic human rights are undermined. A rights-based consideration in bioethics is an approach that holds the centrality of the human person, with a compelling reference to the fundamental human rights of every person. A philosophical and sociological engagement of gender and the notion of autonomy within the household reveals some fundamental rights-based perplexities for bioethical considerations in maternal health. The right to self-determination is undermined, and therefore women's dignity, freedom and autonomy, capacities, and choices are easily defiled. This study applies a rights-based approach to maternal health and demonstrates how rights concerns are associated with negative outcomes in maternal health in Africa. The discussion is situated at the household level, which is the starting point in health care. The paper submits that beyond legal and political rights within the context of the state, rights-based issues manifest at the household level. Many of those rights issues, especially relating to women's autonomy, are detrimental to maternal health in Africa. Therefore, a rights-based approach in the social construction of maternal health realities will contribute to alleviating the burden of maternal mortality in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents citation analysis of PhD theses submitted in the discipline of sociology of the University of Delhi during 1995-2010. The study is based on the 5766 citations taken out from 25 PhD theses of sociology. The study presents analysis of several parameters like authorship pattern, forms of literature, country-wise scattering of citations, distribution of Indian and foreign citations and a ranked list of top 30 cited sociology journals. The study finds that highest number of citations was single authored (83.94 %), and 67.23 % citations were from books and only 22.20 % citations were from journals. The country-wise scattering of citations reveals that 2536 (45.52 %) citations were from India and it was followed by USA and UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The 2010 British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted long-standing questions about energy exploration and its social and environmental implications. Sociologists studying environmental disasters have documented the social impacts resulting from these events and dissatisfaction with government and industry responses. In this paper, we use data from a survey conducted during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to examine how Louisiana and Florida residents'' social backgrounds, experiences with the spill, and trust in information sources predict their perceptions of governmental and BP response efforts. We find that direct personal impacts and compensation strongly influence the evaluations of responding organizations. Age and place of residence also predict such assessments. Finally, levels of confidence in television news and BP as sources of information appear to shape Gulf Coast residents'' opinions about the work of organizations responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we apply theory and research from sociology and social psychology to the problem of collective information sharing and exchange on the internet. We investigate the relationships between pre-existing dispositions to be cautious towards others, the propensity to exert more or less effort as a function of group affiliation, and contribution towards a collective goal. We find that individuals with average or lower levels of general caution are more likely to contribute to a collective pool of information, providing support for Yamagishi's (2001) argument that less cautious individuals exhibit a type of social intelligence by engaging in risky but potentially rewarding social interactions. Consistent with the literature on social loafing, we find that abstract group affiliations have a negative effect on information sharing behaviour. However, the effect of group affiliation is mediated by one's level of general caution. We argue that pre-dispositions to engage in socially risky situations are a critical element of individuals' decisions to contribute to online information sharing systems or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repeated measures designs such as daily diary methods provide flexibility for examinations of fluid phenomena. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) as data collection tools with an end of the day (EOD) diary design and a non-professional sample. Participants reported the PDA was easy to use, convenient and enhanced the privacy of their responses. The PDAs minimized data entry errors and increased the data validity because responses were time stamped. Given the overall positive nature of participant reactions and the additional data PDAs make available to the researcher, the technology is recommended for further use in collecting data with non-professionals or in other couple or family research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on American sociology. The present paper aims to offer an explanation for how sociology came to its present state and what can be done to integrate the discipline. A discipline becomes integrated when there is relatively centralized control over the material, organizational and symbolic resources necessary for intellectual work. Material resources are necessary to conduct intellectual activities. Organizational resources are administrative control over the allocation of material and symbolic resources that enable a discipline develop coherence. Symbolic resources are cultural and include members of a discipline perceiving that they are part of a common intellectual community.

The internet is now a major source of health information for lay people. Within the medical, sociological and popular literatures there have been three main responses to this development. We classify these as ‘celebratory’, ‘concerned’ and ‘contingent’. This paper falls into the third category and, drawing on techniques of discourse analysis, examines people's accounts of their use of online health resources. It identifies six implicit rules – which we call ‘rhetorics of reliability’– that people readily draw upon when articulating why they trust some online sources and not others. In addition participants locate their accounts within broader discursive frameworks in order to present themselves as ‘sensible’ users. The article concludes by suggesting that there is an emerging concordance between the lay use of the internet for health and illness and dominant (generally) biomedical conceptions of what constitutes ‘good quality’ health information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]