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Building social capital between groups of people and developing social enterprises that integrate social goals into commercial business models are rapidly adopted as innovative poverty relief mechanisms across countries. Together, the translation of social relationships into increased accessibility to resources, and the entrepreneurial dynamics resulting in additional services and goods, are thought to meet the survival and developmental needs of poor families and communities. However, the socio-economic contexts, in which new public policies and initiatives have been taken, vary from country to country. In China, its strong Confucian culture, state-led development strategy, weak civil society, and hierarchical social relationships have contributed to a value structure of social capital, but decreased the efficiency of business practice in social enterprise. This chapter presents a case study of Rural Cooperative Program, a poverty relief initiative in China’s southwest Guizhou Province. With the introduction of China’s new policies in welfare and rural development, this chapter presents evaluation results of whether social enterprises and entrepreneurship can improve poor villagers’ socio-economic wellbeing and promote sustainable development of poor rural villages in China, and to what extent social capital has been mobilized to facilitate the Rural Cooperative Program.

This introductory chapter sets the overall context of global civil society in today’s global world. The authors will firstly provide a definition of civil society from social and political science perspectives. Then secondly, the authors provide a contemporary overview of global civil society debates in the current social and political environment; they also offer a short examination of COVID-19 and how this global pandemic has developed new spheres of contestation and collaboration. In the final part of the chapter, the authors present a brief overview of each chapter contributed to this volume.

To better meet people's information needs under the public health crisis, this study explored the information needs and seeking behavior of college students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research utilized a survey and the convenience snowball sampling method. A sample of 400 college students was obtained.

The results revealed that college students have paid great attention to COVID-19-related information. They sought the information mainly for personal protection, obtaining the latest information and seeking information for family and friends. Their COVID-19-related information needs were diverse; at different stages, the concerns were different. Social media and mass media were both found to be the most useful tools for seeking COVID-19 information. Too much repetitive information, unclear authoritative and reliable informational sources, and difficulties in judging the authenticity of the information were the most common obstacles for them in information seeking. Nevertheless, the majority of the students agreed that they were very satisfied and somewhat satisfied with the current information services. This did not affect the students' understanding of the importance of health services provided by libraries.

Insights into the people's information needs and information-seeking behavior of this study could help the information providers to offer appropriate information in better ways to improve the public's virus protection capabilities and maintain the stability of social order.

This study aims to profile the government microbloggers and evaluate their roles. The results can help improve the governments' response capability to public emergencies.

This study proposes the user profiling and role evaluation model of government microbloggers in the context of public emergencies. The indicators are designed from the four dimensions of time, content, scale and influence, and the feature labels are identified. Three different public emergencies were investigated, including the West Africa Ebola outbreak, the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak and the Shandong vaccine case in China.

The results found that most government microbloggers were follower responders, short-term participants, originators, occasional participants and low influencers. The role distribution of government microbloggers was highly concentrated. However, in terms of individual profiles, the role of a government microblogger varied with events.

The findings can provide a reference for the performance assessment of the government microbloggers in the context of public emergencies and help them improve their ability to communicate with the public and respond to public emergencies.

By analyzing the performance of government microbloggers from the four dimensions of time, content, scale and influence, this paper fills the gap in existing literature on designing the user profiling and role evaluation model of government microbloggers in the context of public emergencies.

This paper aims to discover the novelties in biosensor fabrication brought about by breakthroughs in nanomaterials and process techniques, the resulting enhancement in biosensor functionalities, new applications and future possibilities.

The impact of nanotechnology on biosensor advancement has been examined. Different directions of biosensor research in the nano era have been highlighted. These include the efforts made through nanotechnology to improve the performance parameters of the existing biosensors, and for implementation of innovative biosensor concepts.

Nanotechnology is a key technology in biosensor development. It has permeated into the biosensor field and brought in its wake far‐reaching changes.

Biosensor science and engineering are central to virtually all aspects of life including medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and biotechnological process control. Therefore, the progress in biosensors brought about by nanotechnology influences one's everyday life.

The study helps in understanding the applications of nanotechnology in fabricating a new generation of biosensors with improved characteristics. It provides information of value to those involved in biosensor research.