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The Covid-19 pandemic has affected most organizations' working environment and productivity. Organizations have had to make arrangements for staff to operate remotely following the implementation of lockdown regulations around the world, as the pandemic has led to restrictions on movement and the temporary closure of workplace premises. The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the effect of this transition on productivity during the pandemic, by studying a distributed network of research who collaborate remotely. We examine how the productivity of researchers is affected by the distributed collaborative networks in which they are embedded. Our goal is to understand the effects of brokerage and closure on the researchers' publication rate, which is interpreted as an indicator of their productivity. We analyze researchers' communication networks, focusing on structural holes and diversity. We take into account the individual qualities of the focal researcher such as seniority. We find that disciplinary diversity among researchers' peers increases the researchers' productivity, lending support to the brokerage argument. In addition, we find support for two statistical interaction effects. First, structural holes moderate diversity so that researchers with diverse networks are more productive when their networks also have a less redundant structure. Diversity and structural holes, when combined, further researchers' productivity. Second, seniority moderates diversity such that senior researchers are more productive than junior researchers in less diverse networks. In more diverse networks, junior researchers perform as well as senior researchers. Social capital and human capital are complementary. We conclude that the benefits of diversity on researchers' productivity are contingent on the qualities of the researchers and on network structure. The brokerage/closure debate thus needs a more nuanced understanding of causal relationships.

One of the central components of research-related networked work is the exchange of advice through which researchers are expected to share useful information, especially critical information that others might not possess. A key enabler for advice exchange is the minimizing of structural constraints in the organizations. In this study, we wish to gain a better understanding of how structural constraints, in the form of social and network structure, interplay with advice exchange. Our study's focal point is the Graphics, Animation, and New Media (GRAND) network, a national research organization in Canada. By conducting a social network survey ( N = 101), we were able to study advice giving and receiving among GRAND members. Our findings indicate that the centrality of researchers in the communication network positively correlates with both advice giving and receiving. However, the effective network size of communication networks more strongly correlates with advice giving and receiving, especially for the researchers who hold higher hierarchical positions in GRAND. Overall, our findings indicate that both the communication network and the hierarchical structure are strongly correlated with advice giving and receiving. Furthermore, by looking at the combined correlation between social and network structures with advice exchange, we can offer a better understanding of researchers' interactions. Our findings are then discussed within the context of their potential implications for other studies on the topic of research collaboration.

Sport fanship is immeasurable and represents one of society's most universal leisure activities. The current collection of research on the fanship phenomena is truly global: 25 scholars from 4 continents (including North and south America, UK, Australia, Norway, Netherland, and Israel) looked closely at various dimensions of sport fanship. The ongoing COVID pandemic presents both spectators on and off the field with various challenges side to unique opportunity to rethink the way sport fans consume and interact. Thus, the aim of this double special issue with 13 papers was to assemble both applied or theoretical research from experts within fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, economy, media, and gender studies.

This study examines the case of basketball superstar LeBron James, who openly identifies as a liberal. Our analysis of LeBron James' Twitter profile revealed normal distribution between liberals and conservatives following his account. We then compared James' followers' distribution to those of the singer Lady Gaga and liberal-tilting sport network ESPN and found that James' followers' distribution represented the most diverse distribution of the three accounts. We further found that James was the only liberal source in most of his conservative followers' profiles. The findings highlight the potency of celebrity athletes to narrow the trend of political polarization.

Toward better understanding the nature of sport global protest, this article examines the profiles of users of the #boycottqatar2022 ( N = 111,172), a global initiative calling to boycott the 2022 World Cup on grounds of Qatar's alleged breach of human rights. A social network analysis identified that 82% of users of the hashtag were from North America and Western Europe, that 88% of the uses of the hashtag were on Twitter (and a minority on Facebook and Instagram), and that the users' political inclination was mostly liberal in comparison to random users. Overall, the findings indicate that the hashtag was used almost exclusively by activists from the so-called Global North on the more elitist Twitter platform, thus portraying a picture as an act of the global elite rather than a truly inclusive and overarching global initiative. We discuss further theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

The current study examines the extent to which mega sport events play a role in connecting people from different countries, using the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as its case study. The analysis examines social connection (on Twitter) between Chinese and Russians and whether these connections are more likely to occur among the followers of the @Beijing2022 Twitter account, if compared with Twitter users in these countries who do not follow this account. The choice of the Russians and the Chinese also stems from their countries' united front against those Western countries whose diplomats boycotted the games. The analysis reveals that, in cases where two people follow @Beijing2022, the likelihood of there being a connection between them increases by 8%, as compared with those people who do not follow this account, while controlling for other relevant variables. The findings indicate that mega sport events which take place under a boycott have the ability to be enhancers of international social connections.

This study investigates sport fandom's major dimensions: star attraction and team identification, analyzing transfers of soccer players Ronaldo and Messi. Data from teams' official social media (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter/X) using scripts inform our analysis. Results reveal star attraction's significant prominence over team identification. Instagram, linked to celebrity culture and star fandom, displays the highest online growth, emphasizing star attraction's centrality in sport fandom on social media. Implications for fans, teams, and marketers are discussed, emphasizing the need for nuanced understanding to enhance engagement and marketing. Overall, valuable insights into sport fandom's complex dynamics in the social media age emerge.