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Purpose: Free and open-source software (FOSS) has been used worldwide because of the advantages of user control, cost-saving, flexibility, openness, freedom, more security and better stability. The purpose of this study is to explore the status quo of educational application of FOSS and the trends from international perspectives and its implications for higher education in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach: The method of cluster analysis was used in this study. The Web of Science database was used as the data source and all relevant literature for the year 2010-2020 on the theme of "FOSS" was collected for analysis. The information visualization software CiteSpace was used for citation visualization analysis, revealing the research results of FOSS worldwide, including hot spots and development trends. Findings: This paper found that FOSS has become an important research area and is playing an important role in the reform and development of education. Meanwhile, the development and application of FOSS have regional imbalances and strong differentiation, including the educational sector. The paper also found that although FOSS has entered the stage of interdisciplinary development, the research and development of FOSS in the field of education is insufficient, which poses a huge challenge to decision-makers, teachers and students. Originality/value: Implications for higher education in Hong Kong including: attach importance to and vigorously promote FOSS research and practice to benefit more teachers and students; teachers and students need to be trained for acquiring the awareness and skills of FOSS applications and formulate different strategies; the government should provide greater support to formulate and implement a short and middle-term development plan to facilitate the application of FOSS; and Hong Kong higher education institutions may strengthen exchanges and cooperation with counterparts around the world to jointly promote the development of FOSS. It is hoped that the findings will provide a reference for the study and application of FOSS in higher education in Hong Kong.

In times of increasing skills shortage, regions and particularly non-core regions, need to attract highly-skilled workers. It is better for these regions to (re)attract highly-skilled workers that gained knowledge and contacts elsewhere and because they once lived in the region for study have already ties to the university region than trying to attract outsiders without such ties. In general, social networks can contribute to nurturing a "warm place" perception among potential workers. This paper looks at special kinds of social networks. It focuses on higher education alumni networks and discusses their role in retention and (re)attraction for increasing the highly skilled workforce in their university regions. Being part of a university community means that alumni networks are able to maintain continuous contact with their alumni and have a positive effect on students remaining in the region. This can occur through co-operation with the regional economy. However, the current study found that the analysed alumni networks were set up primarily as communication instruments for graduates and alumni and not for regional economy purposes. If elements of retention and (re)attraction are found in the network activities, this is more an unintentional side effect than a purposeful attempt to contribute to the regional economy. This paper argues that alumni networks could take on such a retention and (re)attraction function if they broadened their scope of activities and reorganized their management structure. Alumni networks are an untapped potential, which can be activated for regional purposes.

This papers looks into whether combining Skype, blogging and class discussions reinforces or refutes stereotypes. The hypothesis was that some students do not have an adequate chance to reflect on their skype experience and course content. To see if students have made improvements in reducing stereotypes, the Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Culture will be used to evaluate their blog entries. In addition a survey will be given at end of the semester to analyse the student's perspective of their own learning.

Implementing network type structures has become a widely appreciated strategy to promote actor-relationships in the field of adult and community education and to coordinate them purposefully. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on how a "successful" coordination of actor-relationships can actually be achieved. This paper offers some clues to answering the question by outlining basic characteristics of social networks with reference to a recent case study from Germany.

This paper presents an analysis of resource access patterns in two recently conducted online courses. One of these has been a master level university lecture taught as a blended learning course with a wide range of online learning activities and materials, including collaborative wikis, self-tests, and thematic videos. The other course has been offered in the form of a MOOC. As a specialty of this course, master level students from two different universities could participate as a regular university class and receive credits for successful completion. In both courses, online learning resources such as videos, scientific literature, and wikis played a central role. In this context, the motivation for our research was to investigate characteristic patterns of resource usage of the learners. In order to gain deeper insights into the usage of learning materials, we have adapted methods from social network analysis and applied them to dynamic bipartite student-resource networks built from event logs of the students' resource access. In particular, we describe the clustering of students and resources in such networks and propose a method to identify patterns of the cluster evolution over time.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of membership in the Bologna Process on patterns and driving forces of cross-national student mobility. Student exchange flows are analyzed for almost all Bologna Process member states and non-Bologna OECD members over a ten-year period (from 2000 to 2010). We apply a social network approach focusing on outbound diploma mobility. Based on social network analyses, we first visualize the exchange patterns between sampled countries. In doing so, we analyze the student exchange linkages to gain descriptive insights into the development of the network. Second, we use exponential random graph models (ERGM) to test which factors determine transnational student mobility. The results of our network analyses reveal that cross-national student exchange networks are stable over time. At the core of these networks are the USA, Great Britain, France, and Germany; they attract highest shares of students from most remaining countries in our sample. Moreover, the results of the ERGM demonstrate that homophily between countries determines student exchange patterns. The most relevant ties exist between bordering countries. Moreover, membership in the Bologna Process impacts on mobility patterns, and the effect size increases over the periods investigated.

This paper examines the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany and explores the possibilities of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for uncovering influential actors in educational policy innovation processes. From the theoretical perspective, an actor's influence is inferred from its relative position within issue-specific information flows and the trust placed in its capacities and expertise, instead of relying on an actor's openly expressed role and policy preferences. Drawing on techniques from quantitative SNA enables to analyse the social interactions as well as the frequency and type of information exchange amongst actors in a particular issue area. Empirically, I focus my attention on the educational innovation of ESD, which has been initiated at the global level, but is mainly put into practice at the national or regional level. Data for the study come from mixed mode interviews with a standardised questionnaire. The interviews were conducted and analysed using egocentric and complete SNA. I find, amongst others results, that NGOs and governmental actors occupy significantly more central, prestigious and influential network positions than schools in the course of implementing ESD in Germany. Furthermore, school representatives exhibit few and weak relations, and mostly share links with other formal education actors.

This paper provides a network analysis of the international flow of students among 210 countries and the factors determining the structure of this flow. Among these factors, bilateral hyperlink connections between countries and the number of telephone minutes (communication variables) are the most important predictors of the flow's structure, followed by trade, the physical distance between countries, a common border between countries and a common language between two countries. The USA is by far the most central country in the flow of international students, followed by China, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and India. These results are discussed in light of World-System Theory. Future research should examine how the network of international student flows changes over time and consider additional factors to provide a better understanding of the network as an international system.

The research we report on was conducted from our computer desktops. We have not met the people we have studied; they are part of what Eichhorn described as a "textual community", gathered around the threads of online conversations associated with a website servicing the needs of English-language speakers in Germany. The thread in question started in 2008 with a query from someone about to move to Berlin, seeking advice about the best international school in which to enrol her three children. The ensuing conversations are revealing, not only because of the schools canvassed and the manner in which they are discussed, but also because of the schools that are not charted into the discussion. This paper raises questions about qualitative research methodologies in online settings, particularly in relation to studies of the global middle-class. It examines claims about an emerging commitment to "nonlocal ethnography" and the surmising one can make about research subjects one never meets, but who remain comprehensible because of the broader cultural context in which they are situated. The research carries the promise of "rich enough" ethnography, reflecting a commitment to understanding what people "do", documenting and analysing the intricate realities influencing and shaping individual choices people make, the complexities they face and the realities they help create. The fact that it was done "at a distance", in so-called virtual spaces, does not undermine its ethnographic authenticity.

Bridging Technologies connect otherwise unrelated fields in regional knowledge spaces. By establishing new connections between technologies, they enable technological development through processes of recombinant innovation. In this paper, we develop a set of indicators that help us to characterise technologies in terms of their bridging function and study their evolution over time. We apply these tools to the regional and national levels in Germany. Our findings indicate that large patenting regions are not necessarily the ones that embed most new technologies in their knowledge space. For the German knowledge space we find that during the past two decades, it became less dependent on prominent technologies, such as transport, machinery and chemicals. Changes in the German knowledge space in terms of the development of new bridging technologies can be attributed to a regionally dispersed process rather than one driven by single regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to identify the current state, the emergent research clusters, the key research topics and the configuration of collaboration in scientific production related to the market value of soccer players. Design/methodology/approach: This article analyzes 52 articles published between 1985 and 2021 and from the Scopus and WoS databases. Findings: The subject is of growing interest both in academic and practical areas. A variable that frequently appears as a determinant of market value is crowd wisdom. The largest cluster related to the co-citation level shows that the main issues about soccer player market value are player performance, team performance, and the determinants of the superstar formation. Spain and Germany stand out as essential countries both in literary production and citation rate. The network of collaborations is still low. Research limitations/implications: This study is supported by databases being constantly updated, resulting in continuous variation in the number of indexed journals. Consequently, a bibliometric analysis regarding an emergent topic can, in fewer years, be subject to essential variations. Another limitation is that it has analyzed a particular topic using the most influential databases, and the global perspective could be improved with the incorporation of other different databases. Data regarding collaborations could be helpful for investigations or policies that propose to approach the topic supported by specialized groups. This study offers the possibility for future researchers to extend the databases used, the level of analysis, or focus on specific topics or variables affecting the soccer player market value. Originality/value: This study contributes to knowing the current state of the soccer player market value research. Studies on such topics are relatively limited concerning the literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the German nuclear power industry came under considerable socio-political pressure from the growing environmental and anti-nuclear movement. As part of a diversified public relations strategy, the Kraftwerk Union (KWU, later Siemens) as the main manufacturer of nuclear power plants distributed pre-printed QSL cards to amateur radio enthusiasts. These cards carried images of the latest nuclear power plants built by KWU. This paper examines the history, iconography and distribution of these QSL cards in the context of the heritage of the German nuclear power industry. It is the first study of its kind to examine the heritage significance of QSL cards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its growing economic power, creative industries have climbed scholars' and policy-makers' agendas in recent years. However, in comparison with a high number of cluster studies on rather traditional industries, systematic research on knowledge production, innovation processes and competitiveness in creative industry clusters is still underrepresented. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the video game development industry in Hamburg, Germany, from a knowledge base perspective. The paper concludes that both the symbolic and the synthetic knowledge are the dominant elements that contribute to video game development in Hamburg. On a more critical note, it doubts whether the currently discussed knowledge base perspective is sufficient to explain the competitiveness of creative industries and proposes to analyse procedural knowledge in future research in order to be able to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The occurrence of disasters such as extreme flooding in urban environments has severe consequences, not only on the human population but also on critical infrastructures such as the road networks, which are of vital importance for everyday living and particularly for emergency response. In this article, our main goal is to present-conceptually and in praxis-a model that could be used from the emergency responders for timely and efficient emergency management and response in an urban complex environment. For the city of Cologne in Germany, we aim to indicate possible ways to decrease the emergency response time during an extreme flood scenario through the development of an accessibility indicator, which consists of different components. Therefore, we will investigate the opportunities that occur, in a flood risk scenario, from the use of geographic information in different forms such as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and open-source data in an ArcGIS environment, to increase urban resilience through the decreasing emergency response time. We will focus on network analysis for the fire brigades (first acting emergency responders) during a flood scenario to calculate their emergency response ranges and emergency response routes through flooded road networks, for the assistance of the possibly affected hospitals, refugee homes and fire brigades, which can be flooded. At the end of the paper, we suggest that the vulnerable community of the refugees could be taken into consideration as a new source of VGI, as an additional component that would lead to the decrease in the emergency response time. The geo-located information that could be provided by the refugee community can be very useful in emergency situations, such as those examined in this article where timely information can be forwarded to the proper authorities for a more focused and timely emergency response, increasing the resilience of the urban population and their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online publics offer new spaces for actors to counteract hegemonic narratives within mainstream publics. At the same time, they can also offer spaces for anti-pluralist movements to delegitimise their political opponents—which threatens the agonistic respect modern democracies are dependent on. This paper aims to show whether counter-publics on Facebook do in fact foster or threaten such respect. To do so, the posts of 1465 public Facebook pages and groups debating refugee policy in Germany were downloaded and analysed. Using network analysis, I identified the largest eight communities of pro- and contra-refugee pages. Using discourse analysis, I found that, on the contra-refugee side, agonistic respect for opposing positions was sparse, even in moderate pages, while on the pro-refugee side, agonistic respect is shown more often within more moderate and activist pages. I discuss possible causes for this divergence and argue how further research could enhance these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 100 years, the company network was a major feature of organized corporate governance in Germany. This paper uses network visualization techniques and qualitative-historical analysis to discuss the structure, origins and development of this network and to analyse the reasons for its recent erosion. Network visualization makes it possible to identify crucial entanglement patterns that can be traced back historically. In three phases of network formation - the 1880s, 1920s and the 1950s - capital entanglement resulted from the interaction of company behaviour and government policy. In its heyday, the company network was de facto encompassing and provided its core participants, especially the banks, with a national, macroeconomic perspective. In the 1970s, increased competition among financial companies set in. In the 1980s and 1990s, declining returns from blockholding and increased opportunity costs made network dissolution a thinkable option for companies. Because of the strategic reorientation of the largest banks toward investment banking, ties between banks and industry underwent functional changes. Since the year 2000, the German government's tax policy has sped up network erosion. Vanishing capital ties imply a declining degree of strategic co-ordination among large German companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the dramatic biodiversity crisis, it is crucial to understand how people perceive biodiversity. Knowledge of how thoughts are organized around this concept can identify which ideas are best to focus on biodiversity conservation information campaigns. The primary aim of the present study was to identify social representations of the German public regarding the concept of biodiversity and its loss using a free word association test. Furthermore, unique association networks were analyzed. For this purpose, data collection was performed in September 2021 in Germany using an online questionnaire to assess participants’ associations with the prompt “biodiversity” (n  = 131) and “biodiversity loss” (n  = 130). Additionally, we used the social network software Gephi to create biodiversity (loss) association networks. The five most commonly mentioned associations for biodiversity were “animal,” “plant,” “nature,” “human,” and “flower.” For biodiversity loss, the five most commonly mentioned associations were “species extinction,” “climate change,” “plant,” “insect,” and “bee.” Neither “land use change” nor “invasive species,” as key drivers of biodiversity loss, were present in social representations of the German public. A difference was observed in the total number of mentioned associations between biodiversity and biodiversity loss. For both, the associations “plant” and “animal” were related. However, participants associated specific taxa only with animals, such as “insects” and “birds.” For plants, no specific taxa were named. Based on the network analysis, the most commonly mentioned word pairs for biodiversity and biodiversity loss were “plant – animal” and “species loss – climate change,” respectively. Based on our statistical network analysis, these associations were identified as the most central associations with the greatest influence in the network. Thus, they had the most connections and the function of predicting the flow in the network. In sum, the public’s multifaceted views on biodiversity and its loss, as well as the aforementioned central associations, hold great potential to be utilized more for the communication and education of biodiversity conservation. In addition, our findings contribute to the scientific community’s understanding of social representations and perceptions of biodiversity and its loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Providing adequate living conditions for forcibly displaced people represents a significant challenge for host countries such as Germany. This study explores refugee mental health's reciprocal, dynamic relationship with post-migration living conditions and social support. Methods: The study sample included 325 Arabic- or Farsi-speaking asylum seekers and refugees residing in Germany since 2014 and seeking mental health treatment. Associations between reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression and the subjective quality of living conditions and perceived social support were analyzed using a two-level approach including multiple linear regression and network analyses. Results: Post-migration quality of living conditions and perceived social support were significantly associated with negative mental health outcomes on both levels. In the network, both post-migration factors were negatively connected with overlapping symptoms of psychiatric disorders, representing potential target symptoms for psychological treatment. Conclusion: Post-migration quality of living conditions and social support are important factors for refugee mental health and should be targeted by various actors fostering mental well-being and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parliaments with party-centred rules of speechmaking, like the German Bundestag, we observe an overrepresentation of loyal frontbenchers on the speakers' list. Previous research shows that party-controlled access to the plenary floor limits opportunities to voice dissent, but we lack empirical investigation of the overall impact on the contestation in debates. This article presents a case study of Bundestag debates on the euro crisis, which estimates the discursive impact by comparing speeches with MPs' written expressions, known as explanations of vote (EoVs), and introducing association rule mining in an innovative network analytical approach. The findings confirm that restrictive rules reduce the visibility of intra-party conflict and constrain the space for coherent narratives, backbench concerns and political alternatives at an aggregate level, raising questions about the democratic functions of parliamentary debates. In this case, MPs use EoVs as an alternative channel to promote transnational solidarity in a European crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research as a social process suggests that the collective research agenda of a discipline is shaped by its structural features which thus helps to explain why we actually discuss what we discuss within an academic domain. This assumption also substantially informs publication patterns and co-authorship networks in German civic education research: Who are the most central researchers? What groups of collaborating researchers exist? How do these clusters diverge in their characteristics? The article addresses these questions by drawing on an encompassing dataset that considers multiple publication types including book publications, journal articles and chapters in edited volumes with more than 3000 contributions and 900 authors published between 2014 and 2020 in German civic education research. Using bibliometrics, different techniques of network analysis and consensus graph clustering methods, the analysis reveals patterns of co-authorship and presents the first systematic mapping of the discipline. In this way, the most important research clusters, their characteristics and the major researchers in the domain of civic education research in Germany are assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two years, digital media have contributed significantly to increasing the visibility of those who are outstandingly challenged by the pandemic. In Germany, the Twitter hashtag #systemrelevant [systemically relevant] initiated a public debate on values and working conditions. Applying the practice-theory-based concept of performative publics, we analyze the formation of this specific public with a special focus on its gendered structure. Results of our mixed-methods approach show how health care work has become the dominant issue of #systemrelevant. Civil society actors and engaged health care workers set the agenda, and journalism primarily responds to these voices. Although care work is performed predominantly by women, most of the attention online is given to men. However, on the level of tweets and linked content, the discourse in #systemrelevant counteracts stereotypical images of women in health care. Overall, the ethnographic data on the most significant collective actor show a continuous tension between symbolic recognition and their struggle for improving working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides a pure location policy, film subsidies are often justified with a contribution to artistic film quality and the diversity of the film supply. Selection committees deciding on film grants consist, to a large extent, of industry veterans who tend to prefer projects that seem familiar to them. In this study, we have drawn on the concepts of homophily and network theory to systematically study the impact of film subsidies in two empirical studies conducted in Germany. First, we had conducted interviews with film producers about their experiences while applying for a film grant and how this has changed over time. The results suggest an inter-organizational isomorphism resulting from a reproduction of norms and judgements. One mechanism at work here might be newcomers' adjustments and the self-affirmation of veteran producers. Second, we had conducted a network analysis to assess how being connected to others, particularly members of a funding committee, affects a grant sum for a film. The more a film crew is connected to other industry professionals, the higher the amount of funding received; the presence of a former, current or future committee member on a film crew also enhances the sum. We conclude that the way German film funding is designed does not promote innovation or diversity as policy goals but serves as a means of self-reproduction of industry standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested a novel method for studying human experience (thoughts and affect). We utilized Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs)–an approach to visually represent thoughts and their affective connotations as networks of concepts that individuals associate with a given event. Using an innovative software tool, we recruited a comparative sample of (n = 93) Canadians and (n = 100) Germans to draw a CAM of their experience (events, thoughts, feelings) with the Covid-19 pandemic. We treated these CAM networks as a series of directed graphs and examined the extent to which their structural properties (latent and emotional) are predictive for the perceived coronavirus threat (PCT). Across multiple models, we found consistent and significant relationships between these network variables and the PCT in both the Canadian and German sample. Our results provide unique insights into individuals' thinking and perceptions of the viral outbreak. Our results also demonstrate that a network analysis of CAMs' properties is a promising method to study the relationship between human thought and affective connotation. We suggest that CAMs can bridge several gaps between qualitative and quantitative methods. Unlike when using quantitative tools (e.g., questionnaires), participants' answers are not restricted by response items as participants are free to incorporate any thoughts and feelings on the given topic. Furthermore, as compared to traditional qualitative measures, such as structured interviews, the CAM technique may better enable researchers to objectively assess and integrate the substance of a shared experience for large samples of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a network approach, we investigate the determinants of intra-EU migration flows between all 28 EU member states in the years 2001, 2005, 2008 and 2013. Our descriptive analysis of the networks of intra-EU migration flows shows that the EU migration space is dominated by two core destination countries (Germany and United Kingdom). The results of our cross-sectional exponential random graph models (ERGM) reveal that the status of Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) as core destination countries remains a robust characteristic of the network of intra-EU migration flows over time, even when controlling for GDP, unemployment rates or shared geographical borders between destination and source countries. Furthermore, our results point to the differentiated effects of national economic performance on outgoing and ingoing flows: GDP per capita mainly affects intra-EU inflows, while unemployment rates tend to influence outmigration. Lastly, regulatory linkages – measured with the accession to the EU of source countries and the opening of the labour market of destination countries – exert a moderate effect on intra-EU migration flows when taking into account the national economic performances of source and destination countries, the core status of Germany and the United Kingdom, and the shared borders between destination and source countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online mentoring can be useful for supporting girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, little is known about the differential effects of various online mentoring formats. We examine the general and relative effectiveness of three online mentoring formats, one‐on‐one mentoring, many‐to‐many group mentoring, and a hybrid form of the two. All three formats were implemented in different years in the Germany‐wide online‐only mentoring program, CyberMentor, whose platform enables communication and networking between up to 800 girls (in grades 5–13) and 800 women (STEM professionals) each year. We combined longitudinal mentee data for all first‐year participants (N = 4017 girls, Mage = 14.15 years) from 9 consecutive mentoring years to evaluate and compare the three mentoring formats. Overall, all formats effected comparable increases in mentees' STEM activities and certainty about career plans. However, mentees' communication behavior and networking behavior on the mentoring platform differed between the three formats. Mentees in the hybrid mentoring format showed the most extensive STEM‐related communication and networking on the platform. We also analyzed the explanatory contributions of STEM‐related communication and networking on interindividual differences in the developmental trajectories of mentees' STEM activities, elective intentions in STEM, and certainty about career plans, for each format separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Are global value chains (GVCs) truly global or are they more of a regional phenomenon? We provide a new perspective on this issue using network analysis based on the measure of trade in value added. We first show that GVC activities can be consistently identified and grouped into three types of networks, i.e. traditional, simple, and complex trade networks, according to the number of times that factor contents cross national borders in global production sharing. Further investigation on the changes in topology and structure of various networks reveals that, GVCs are more likely organized regionally and dominated by large countries, like the US, China, and Germany. However, at the sector level, what GVCs look like largely depends on the perspective (supply or demand) and the type of networks adopted. This can help better understand the possible structural change of GVCs brought by the US–China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen tremendous advances in the scientific study of networks, as more and larger data sets of relationships among nodes have become available in many different fields. This has led to pathbreaking discoveries of near-universal network behavior over time, including the principle of preferential attachment and the emergence of scaling in complex networks. Missing from the set of network analysis methods to date is a measure that describes for each node how its relationship (or links) with other nodes changes from one period to the next. Conventional measures of network change for the most part show how the degrees of a node change; these are scalar comparisons. Our contribution is to use, for the first time, the cosine similarity to capture not just the change in degrees of a node but its relationship to other nodes. These are vector (or matrix)-based comparisons, rather than scalar, and we refer to them as “rewiring” coefficients. We apply this measure to three different networks over time to show the differences in the two types of measures. In general, bigger increases in our rewiring measure are associated with larger increases in network density, but this is not always the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hopelessness is a complex phenomenon with important clinical consequences, such as depression and suicidality. Despite its major impact on mental health, little is known about the structure of hopelessness. In this study, hopelessness was investigated in a large community sample (n = 1985), recruited to be highly representative of general population in Germany. In the context of network analysis, state-of-the-art techniques were adopted (i) to investigate which thoughts and beliefs (nodes) are the most central ones and (ii) to shed light on the specific associations (edges) among them. Stability and accuracy were also checked to ensure trustworthiness of the findings. The analyses revealed that expecting more negative than positive future events and having important goals blocked along with feelings of giving-up were the most central elements of hopelessness. Moreover, being unable to imagine the future and perceiving it as vague and uncertain were both coupled with anticipating a dark future. Theoretical and clinical consequences of this study were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key observations of delinquency research – that adolescents are more likely to offend during the time spent in the company of peers and without adult supervision – has been supported by recent studies following Situational Action Theory (SAT). According to SAT, exposure to criminogenic settings may influence adolescent behaviour by presenting opportunities and frictions; however, the outcome is seen as conditional on individual crime propensities and the moral context in which opportunities and frictions are encountered. To what extent the behaviour of adolescents in these settings also depends on the delinquent inclinations of their peers is an additional question that has received less attention. In the current study, we use data from a recent German school survey, including network data and a direct measurement of delinquent friends, to test for interactions between unstructured socializing and the crime propensities of respondents, as well as of their friends, and find support for SAT. In this context the measurement of ‘delinquent friends’ becomes important because its association with an adolescent’s own delinquency is likely to be overestimated when respondents report on their friends’ behaviour. The novel contribution of this study is to analyse how the interplay between these factors changes if one moves from an indirect to a direct measurement of friends’ delinquency. We show that the influence of situations and opportunities is unduly diminished when using the indirect measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social processes in the production of scientific output suggests that the collective research agenda of a discipline is influenced by its structural features, such as “invisible colleges” or “groups of collaborators” as well as academic “stars” that are embedded in, or connect, these research groups. Based on an encompassing dataset that takes into account multiple publication types including journals and chapters in edited volumes, we analyze the complete co-authorship network of all 1,339 researchers in German political science. Through the use of consensus graph clustering techniques and descriptive centrality measures, we identify the ten largest research clusters, their research topics, and the most central researchers who act as bridges and connect these clusters. We also aggregate the findings at the level of research organizations and consider the inter-university co-authorship network. The findings indicate that German political science is structured by multiple overlapping research clusters with a dominance of the subfields of international relations, comparative politics and political sociology. A small set of well-connected universities takes leading roles in these informal research groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has had a major influence on U.S. social work while it has rarely been adapted in German-speaking countries. This study investigates how knowledge about EBP is diffused within and across geographical contexts. Network analysis methods reveals different diffusion patterns and provide reasons for these differences. For example, the U.S. discourse is self-contained and based on a more homogeneous knowledge base, while the German discourse is more heterogeneous and focuses on a notion of reflexive professionalism. The different conceptual influences within the U.S. and German discourses are discussed in light of future directions of disciplinary social work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Animal trade plays an important role for the spread of infectious diseases in livestock populations. The central question of this work is how infectious diseases can potentially spread via trade in such a livestock population. We address this question by analyzing the underlying network of animal movements. In particular, we consider pig trade in Germany, where trade actors (agricultural premises) form a complex network. Methodology: The considered pig trade dataset spans several years and is analyzed with respect to its potential to spread infectious diseases. Focusing on measurements of network-topological properties, we avoid the usage of external parameters, since these properties are independent of specific pathogens. They are on the contrary of great importance for understanding any general spreading process on this particular network. We analyze the system using different network models, which include varying amounts of information: (i) static network, (ii) network as a time series of uncorrelated snapshots, (iii) temporal network, where causality is explicitly taken into account. Findings: We find that a static network view captures many relevant aspects of the trade system, and premises can be classified into two clearly defined risk classes. Moreover, our results allow for an efficient allocation strategy for intervention measures using centrality measures. Data on trade volume do barely alter the results and is therefore of secondary importance. Although a static network description yields useful results, the temporal resolution of data plays an outstanding role for an in-depth understanding of spreading processes. This applies in particular for an accurate calculation of the maximum outbreak size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structures of interest, influence and power in communication policy are shifting due to increasing digitization, economization and globalization. Against this background it is necessary to reflect more than before upon methods to study the relations between actors and their potential influences on regulation processes. The article explains qualitative network analysis as a research strategy for communication policy research and discusses qualitative interviews and network cards as research tools to put network analysis into practice. The theoretical basis consists of governance and network theory. The article focuses on an analysis of the German youth protection system, which provides practical insight into a qualitative network study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the early 1990s, regional networks have received a lot of academic and political attention as vehicles for knowledge-based economic development. However, this powerful rhetoric has been accompanied by surprisingly little concrete analysis. Economic geography is only recently waking up to the potential of network analysis for interorganisational linkages within and between regions. We discuss network analysis as a strategic information tool for regional knowledge management and apply it to the metropolitan region of Hannover-Braunschweig-Göttingen-Wolfsburg in the northern German state of Lower Saxony. Producing network diagrams and parameters of network size, density, centrality, cohesion and connectivity from a large sample of actors and linkages, our survey shows striking differences between different fields of competence that highlight the potential of network analysis as a powerful tool and a necessary basis for decision-making to propel metropolitan regions into the knowledge economy. We outline both case-specific and generic implications for the practice of regional knowledge management. However, a few methodological shortcomings still call for further research to be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies instruments of social network analysis to a study of communication networks within the Italian and German extremist right. Web links between organizational websites are used as a proxy. Indeed, extremist groups increasingly use and abuse the Internet for their propaganda and their recruitment, and also for their internal communication. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organizations, even violent groups. In a macro-, micro-, and meso-analysis, the various specificities of the two national political sectors are demonstrated and linked to the offline reality. The Italian network appears to be very fragmented, highly diversified, and difficult to be coordinated ('policephalous network'), whereas the German network is denser and much more concentrated on a few central actors ('star structure'). These differences are mainly due to political opportunity structures in the two countries. Additionally, whereas the Italian network structure allows for the construction of a typology of sub-groups of organizations, the German communicative structure seems to be more erratic and less coordinated. The article also highlights the function of websites which are not related to any specific group. Indeed, these are of special importance for the far right as a political arena which is usually banned from the dominant societal discourses (if not even legally forbidden). Considering this, new modes of communication can be of greater use for extremist groups than for more traditional political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election campaigns are catalysts for new forms of political communication. They are a field of experimentation for new techniques and technologies to reach target groups and influence voters. This article explores how weblogs were used in the 2005 Bundestag election campaign in Germany, examining their effect on the mediatized political field. It is based on an empirical analysis of 317 campaign weblogs. Building on mediatization theory and research on campaign weblogs in other countries, weblog usage is examined along the dimensions of activity, interactivity, and connectedness. The results of the study indicate that weblog communication largely follows the dominant logic of mass media. But weblogs also offer forms of communication that allow political actors to bypass established media practices. Although the results are limited by the fact that the political blogosphere in Germany is still under construction, they reveal the potential of weblogs to enrich campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the contributions made by major institutions and individuals, to the success of Cologne becoming a German arts centre, and describes the demographic and economic changes of the city. Arguments linking creativity to deviant behaviour; Reasons why Cologne acquired status of German arts city; Creation of additional jobs; Creativity policy; Conclusion; References.