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The study aims to investigate urban agriculture in the city of São Paulo from the perspective of social capital. The specific objectives are (1) to identify the effects of social capital on urban agriculture and (2) to investigate social capital formation (its sources and challenges imposed onto its development).

Initially, a review of the literature was carried out in order to understand the main concepts used in the field of study. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with people from urban agriculture initiatives, and they were analyzed under the lens of social capital.

Aspects of social capital were recognized and organized in a framework including sources, effects and challenges. The first deals with consummatory or instrumental sources that generate social capital. The second deals with the following effects: generation of human capital, citizenship, engagement, access and mobilization of resources, and access to information. The third deals with the challenges to its formation related to homophily and the perception of benefits from this form of capital.

Urban agriculture plays an increasingly important role in relieving the pressure generated by the food production system, being part of the solution to food security and sustainability issues. Many researchers recognize important social aspects acting on the dynamics of the movement and the effects of activities on the generation of social capital. The contribution of this work is to deepen the understanding of this type of capital in the context of urban agriculture.

Belonging to the financial technologies’ companies, equity-based crowdfunding platforms offer investors the opportunity to become shareholders through the purchase of small equity stakes of new innovative ventures. This paper aims to investigate gender-related differences in the behaviour of investors in firms seeking equity financing in Latin America.

Using a unique database, with combined information from different equity crowdfunding platforms in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, the authors study the population of 492 projects between 2013 and 2017. To analyse the relationship between investors’ gender-related differences and equity crowdfunding investment, this paper applies Poisson regression.

Results suggest that the probability that an investor finances a firm is based on gender bias. Investors prefer firms led by entrepreneurs that are similar to them in terms of gender. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that both female and male investors are risk-averse and are more likely to invest in the equity of firms that are older and offer a higher percentage of equity. However, female investors are associated with firms that are on average older and offer 0.02% more equity.

These findings have implications for crowdfunding platforms managers when selecting their target companies and policymakers when defining political actions to promote greater use of equity crowdfunding among female entrepreneurs and decrease barriers hindering women’s access to investment.

Unique in its proposition and data usage, this study sheds light on the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs in the Latin American equity crowdfunding market.

The pandemic has enhanced the global phenomenon of disinformation. This paper aims to study the false news concerning COVID-19, spread through social media in Spain, by using the LatamChequea database for a duration from 01/22/2020, when the first false information has been detected, up to 03/09/2021.

A quantitative analysis has been conducted with regard to the correlation between fake news stories and the pandemic state, the motive to share them, their dissemination in other countries and the effectiveness of fact checking. This study is complemented by a qualitative method: a focus group conducted with representatives of different groups within the society.

Fake news has been primarily disseminated through several social networks at the same time, with two peaks taking place in over a half of the said false stories. The first took place from March to April of 2020 during complete lockdown, and we were informed of prevention measures, the country’s situation and the origin of the virus, whereas the second was related to news revolving around the coming vaccines, which occurred between October and November. The audience tends to neither cross-check the information received nor report fake news to competent authorities, and fact-checking methods fail to stop their spread. Further awareness and digital literacy campaigns are thus required in addition to more involvement from governments and technological platforms.

The main limitation of the research is the fact that it was only possible to conduct a focus group of five individuals who do not belong to generation Z due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, although a clear contribution to the analysis of the impact of fake news on social networks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain can be seen from the privileged experiences in each of the fields of work that were identified. In this sense, the results of the study are not generalizable to a larger population. On the other hand, and with a view to future research, it would be advisable to carry out a more specific study of how fake news affects generation Z.

This research is original in nature, and the findings of this study are valuable for business practitioners and scholars, brand marketers, social media platform owners, opinion leaders and policymakers.

While recent years have seen a number of studies of social networks in therapeutic communities (TCs) and other residential settings, these have primarily focused on male residents. This paper aims to conduct a longitudinal social network analysis of interpersonal interactions in a TC for women.

The data consists of a longitudinal directed social network of instances of feedback between 56 residents of a 16 bed TC for women over a period of 611 days. Mean age of the participants was 33.1 years, mean length of stay was 133.9 days and 91% of the participants were female. Feedback consisted of written affirmations for prosocial behavior and written corrections for contravening TC norms. Data was analyzed using a latent factor longitudinal social network model.

Residents react to peer intervention in complex ways. Residents reciprocated affirmations (B = 0.14, 95% confidence interval = 0.10, 0.18) and corrections (B = 0.20, 95% CI = 0.13, 0.25). Controlling for reciprocity, participants who received affirmations were more likely to affirm and correct peers (B = 0.10, 95% CI = 0.06, 0.15; B = 0.17, 95% CI = 0.10, 0.23), suggesting that the encouragement offered by affirmations leads to increased activity. Homophily by admission time occurred in both affirmations and corrections (B = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.10, 0.37; B = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.29, 0.74).

While affirmations and corrections serve as vehicles for behavioral reinforcement and social learning, they also allow residents to interact in ways that strengthen social bonds.

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

The scarcity of women in advertising creative departments has been reported globally, particularly in creative managerial roles. This study goes a step beyond this evidence since this paper aims to test whether having at least one token woman in creative managerial positions (token+) may be associated with a larger presence of females in low-level creative jobs compared to creative departments led only by male creative managers.

A content analysis of the credit forms of 839 Spanish campaigns released in 2019 was conducted to determine the gender composition of 116 creative departments with more than three professionals.

Generalized Poisson Regressions indicated that when at least a token woman is present in a creative management role within agency networks, the number of females in low-level positions doubles with respect to creative departments led only by male managers. This relation was not found for independent agencies, though. The results are discussed under the lens of critical mass theory, attraction paradigm and homophily theory.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time in the literature that the relation among the number of token+ advertising female creative managers and the amount of females in lower-level creative positions is tested. This research is also original because the sample is from a non-Anglo-Saxon country. Moreover, the use of the Generalized Poisson Regressions technique is another novelty of this paper.

This paper presents a critical review of the economic network analysis methods and their applications to maritime transport. A network can be presented in terms of its structure, topology, characteristics as well as the connectivity with different measures such as density, degree distribution, centrality (degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector and strength), clustering coefficient, average shortest path length and assortative. Various models such as the random graph model, block model, and ERGM can be used to analyse and explore the formation of a network and interaction between nodes. The review of the existing theories and models has found that, while these models are rather computationally intensive, they are based on some rather restrictive assumption on network formation and relationship between ports in the network at the local and global levels that require further investigation. Based on the review, a conceptual framework for maritime transport network research is developed, and the applications for future research are also discussed.

This paper presents a critical review of the economic network analysis methods and their applications to maritime transport. A network can be presented in terms of its structure, topology, characteristics as well as the connectivity with different measures such as density, degree distribution, centrality (degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector and strength), clustering coefficient, average shortest path length and assortative. Various models such as the random graph model, block model, and ERGM can be used to analyse and explore the formation of a network and interaction between nodes. The review of the existing theories and models has found that, while these models are rather computationally intensive, they are based on some rather restrictive assumption on network formation and relationship between ports in the network at the local and global levels that require further investigation. Based on the review, a conceptual framework for maritime transport network research is developed, and the applications for future research are also discussed.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the trends regarding housing segregation over the past 10–20 years and determine whether housing segregation has a spillover effect on neighbouring housing areas. Namely, the authors set out to determine whether proximity to a specific type of segregated housing market has a negative impact on nearby housing markets while proximity to another type of segregated market has a positive impact.

For the purposes of this paper, the authors must combine information on segregation within a city with information on property values in the city. The authors have, therefore, used data on the income of the population and data on housing values taken from housing transactions. The case study used is the city of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The empirical analysis will be the estimation of the traditional hedonic pricing model. It will be estimated for the condominium market.

The results indicate that segregation, when measured as income sorting, has increased over time in some of the housing markets. Its effects on housing values in neighbouring housing areas are significant and statistically significant.

A better understanding of the different potential spillover effects on housing prices in relation to the spatial distribution of various income groups would be beneficial in determining appropriate property assessment levels. In other words, awareness of this spillover effect could improve existing property assessment methods and provide local governments with extra information to make an informed decision on policies and services needed in different neighbourhoods.

On housing prices emanating from proximity to segregated areas with high income differs from segregated areas with low income, policies that address socio-economic costs and benefits, as well as property assessment levels, should reflect this pronounced difference. On the property level, positive spillover on housing prices near high-income segregated areas will cause an increase in the number of higher income groups and exacerbate segregation based on income. Contrarily, negative spillover on housing prices near low-income areas might discourage high-income households from moving to a location near low-income segregated areas. Local government should be aware of these spillover effects on housing prices to ensure that policies intended to reduce socioeconomic segregation, such as residential and income segregation, produce desirable results.

Furthermore, a good estimation of these spillover effects on housing prices would allow local governments to carry out a cost–benefit analysis for policies intended to combat segregation and invest in deprived communities.

The main contribution of this paper is to go beyond the traditional studies of segregation that mainly emphasise residential segregation based on income levels, i.e. low-income or high-income households. The authors have analysed the spillover effect of proximity to hot spots (high income) and cold spots (low income) on the housing values of nearby condominiums or single-family homes within segregated areas in Stockholm Municipality in 2013.

Social media has made people better informed but also easier to manipulate. By using literature review and observing social media, the authors found a problem about echo chamber effect. The purpose of this paper is to know how the echo chamber affects the people who consume political news and the role of media diversity in it.

To conduct this study, the authors used a structured questionnaire on the Qualtrics platform to collect data from 183 participants. The authors collected data using a simple random technique. This study is based on the cross-sectional survey; the data collection period is from October to November 2023. The authors used the SPSS software to analyze the relationships between the variables and test the hypothesis.

This study found that, echo chamber is not affected by media diversity. Because of increased political interest, people will be less influenced by echo chambers. In addition, demographic factors affect political interest. People use search engines and social media sites instead of political websites when it comes to the consumption of political news online. People like to communicate with individuals who hold conflicting political views.

Researchers have not yet been able to gain a clear understanding of whether users are in an echo chamber or not and how they are interacting in that environment. Research on this topic is still going on from different perspectives. This study helped to clarify whether or not more media consumption will affect echo chambers. The possibility of being trapped in an echo chamber exists whether we use a single medium or a variety of media. The novelty of this study lies in the use of the echo chamber scale to investigate a thorough understanding of this word through the use of many factors.