Network Society Research Articles

Activity of social networks of the Faculty of Journalism of Advertising and Publishing

In the modern world, social networks play an important role for constant communication with users of the information space, in addition, they perform such functions as: informing, shaping public opinion, promotion, reminder, PR and advertising. Social networks are the most important platform and an integral part in building a personal brand, including the brand of the Faculty of Journalism, Advertising and Publishing. Nowadays, no company, media holding and even a government agency can communicate with its customers without having their own accounts in social networks. After all, the modern user of the information space primarily obtains information about any product from the Internet, and not from the newspaper as it was in the early 2000s. Today, social networks have become the main communication tool of the network society and are especially actively used in the system of marketing communications [7, 147]. The article examines the importance of social networks in the XXI century, the ability to use social networking tools for quality communication with users, maintaining the image, as well as attracting new users, and in the case of the Faculty of Journalism, Advertising and Publishing – future entrants, students.

Anthropomorphic information networks and converging technologies: challenge to humanity vs step forward?

The impact of convergening technologies on the social processes of the information society is investigated. It is grounded that at the beginning of the 21st century, the globalization of society is realized by means of convergening technologies. They are based on innovative communication technologies, in particular, technologies of artificial intelligence. The converging technologies of social structure expansion transform it into a network architect, where sustainability of social relations is the most important ergument. The recognition of the lack of administrative influence to achieve socially important goals leads to the fact that convergence of technologies is an irreversible part of the new technological way. The strengthening of the informational pressure that accompanies the formation of the network society further removes the person from realization of its potential, replacing critical, rational thinking with stereotyped, formalized information and communication exchange. As a result, the more dispersed (convergent) are social institutions and their networks, the less capable and willing to control them. Humanity was first faced with the challenge of its intellect, ability to create, control, recognize. Is society ready to give part of the management of the virtual network and artificial intelligence to the face of global problems? This question is before humanity. That is why the author underlies the idea that social modernization requires interpretation of convergence as a strategic innovation. Lack of public control over the convergence of networks leads to reverse – diverging processes. It is shown that the latter produce different forms of social alienation. And the emergence of anthropomorphic networks, based on the technologies of big data processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, sharply pose questions of the future before every inhabitant of the planet.

The digital environment: How we live, learn, work, and play now. Boczkowski, Pablo J. and Mitchelstein, Eugenia. The MIT Press. 2021. 208 pp. $24.95 (hardcover). (ISBN: 9780262046190).

Journal of the Association for Information Science and TechnologyEarly View BOOK REVIEW The digital environment: How we live, learn, work, and play now. Boczkowski, Pablo J. and Mitchelstein, Eugenia. The MIT Press. 2021. 208 pp. $24.95 (hardcover). (ISBN: 9780262046190). Tim Jordan, Corresponding Author Tim Jordan [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-0057-291X UCL Arts and Sciences, University College London, London, UK Correspondence Tim Jordan, UCL Arts and Sciences, University College London, London, UK. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Tim Jordan, Corresponding Author Tim Jordan [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-0057-291X UCL Arts and Sciences, University College London, London, UK Correspondence Tim Jordan, UCL Arts and Sciences, University College London, London, UK. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 29 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24752Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. REFERENCES Bennet, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Cambridge University Press. Castells, M. (1996). The information age: Economy, society and culture Vol. 1: The rise of the network society. Blackwell. Coleman, G. (2015). Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: The many faces of anonymous. Verso Books. Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press. Earl, J., & Kimport, K. (2011). Digitally enabled social change: Activism in the internet age. The MIT Press. Kraidy, M. M. (2017). The naked blogger of Cairo: Creative insurgency in the Arab world. Harvard University Press. Lekakis, E. J. (2022). Consumer activism: Promotional culture and resistance. Sage Publishing. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue ReferencesRelatedInformation

Asymmetry of Online Speech: The Danger for Speaker and Language Use

Network society possesses more influence towards people’s lives presently. As a consequence, the caring for uptake is growing within speech acts in online contexts. From the realistic world to the virtual one, the linguistic boundary is becoming broader, so as the boundaries of people themselves. The information age has already changed the cognition about human beings, which is the essence of people is informational fluid that can depart from the body and present an ambiguous status on the network. Causing by the rise of the position of the uptake, a speaker is more likely to fall into an asymmetrical interlocution when exposed to the Internet. This conversational inequality would change the way people speak, and furtherly influence their ideology. The dangers of online speech are therefore unsealed, including the sluggishness and rigidification of language use as well as the conversion within the speakers’ minds, whose details will be discussed in this paper.

‘I’m not blue or green. I’m black’. The participatory entextualization of translingual memes and metapragmatic comments in transnational sociopolitical discourse

This article examines sociopolitical discourse in the democratic network society of Taiwan from translingual and transnational perspectives. Ten multimodal memes from two YouTube videos and the associated metapragmatic comments were analyzed. This study combined a discourse-historical approach and translingual analyses of YouTube users’ meme-related discursive strategies, which link historical and political rhetoric to recently circulated linguistic ideologies and cultural stereotypes. This study suggests that the discursive processes of meme-making and interpreting on social media can be understood as networked publics’ performative acts in participatory entextualization with larger sociohistorical formations. The results may provide insights into the translingual practices in the specific multilingual society of Taiwan and into broader everyday democratic participation in a globalized transnational network.

Political Disaffection and Digital Political Participation in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of the Period 2008–2020

One of the issues facing the field of political behaviour analysis in recent years has been the transformation of political participation among citizens, in a context of increasing change, profoundly marked by the spread of a new digital paradigm. Network society has brought with it new forms of political participation, where different types of participatory citizenship coexist in a process of increasing interaction which, in turn, creates new morphologies, and where online and offline modes are reciprocal, generating new patterns of behaviour. Of these different types of participatory citizenship, that of the disaffected is perhaps among the most important in recent years and, in particular, since the start of the so-called “Great Recession” around 2008, and the subsequent global COVID-19 crisis. This recent context can be characterised by a significant increase in political disaffection, resulting from a loss of trust in institutions and from the constant distancing of a certain section of the citizenry from politics as a coded punishment of those governments and institutions they see as ineffective. This paper provides an analysis of citizenship types in Latin America, particularly that of the disaffected, describing their relationship to the following of political information through digital media and social networks, and identifying patterns of evolution and development in some of the trends. Results show that a clear distinction exists between the different types of citizenship and associated forms of participation, both online and offline, while also describing differences in both political perceptions and attitudes, and between areas or regions in Latin America. Likewise, important differences are found according to citizen type in relation to the following of different social networks, especially among citizens categorised as critical or disaffected.

Confirmation bias in social networks

In this study, I present a theoretical social learning model to investigate how confirmation bias affects opinions when agents exchange information over a social network. Hence, besides exchanging opinions with friends, agents observe a public sequence of potentially ambiguous signals and interpret it according to a rule that includes confirmation bias. First, this study shows that regardless of level of ambiguity both for people or networked society, only two types of opinions can be formed, and both are biased. However, one opinion type is less biased than the other depending on the state of the world. The size of both biases depends on the ambiguity level and relative magnitude of the state and confirmation biases. Hence, long-run learning is not attained even when people impartially interpret ambiguity. Finally, analytically confirming the probability of emergence of the less-biased consensus when people are connected and have different priors is difficult. Hence, I used simulations to analyze its determinants and found three main results: (i) some network topologies are more conducive to consensus efficiency, (ii) some degree of partisanship enhances consensus efficiency even under confirmation bias and (iii) open-mindedness (i.e. when partisans agree to exchange opinions with opposing partisans) might inhibit efficiency in some cases.

“SUCH A RADICAL ESSENCE”: POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION AMONG VICTIMS’ RELATIVES IN THE MEXICAN WAR ON DRUGS AND CRIME*

In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón started a “war” against criminal groups that led to the murder and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people. In response, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity was formed by the victims’ relatives and allied activists in 2011, giving rise to various forms of political contention to demand justice and halt the so-called war. I analyze the biographical outcomes of this type of involvement in social movements. My argument is that the participants’ lives have been affected in three main ways: a reconfiguration of their sociability networks, the development of know-how and expertise, and a renegotiation of their worldviews that has turned political contention into a crucial feature of self. Following recent calls, this research provides evidence to deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding of the effects of socialization within and by social movements and of the consolidation of biographical outcomes through cognitive-relational processes.

Capacidade de comunicação das entidades do CNS nos meios digitais: há assimetrias expressivas entre os segmentos?

Abstract This work presents the results of a study that analyzed the processes and communication strategies by the entities represented in the National Health Council (NHC), 2018-2021 administration. The production of alternative communication by civil society constitutes one of the fundamental principles of democratic regimes for an important American institutionalist author (Robert Dahl). The emergence of the Internet and social networks has brought new demands for these organizations to disseminate their ideas and be present in this network society (Castells). Our study aimed to analyze the extent to which these entities are present in the digital media and to verify if there were significant differences in the communication capacity among the segments represented in the NHC. A survey was applied to the communication departments of the 42 NHC entities from September 2019 to February 2020. Thirty-four answers were obtained (81%). The results show the existence of 3 different levels of development in communication within these entities, regardless of the macro-institutional categories. Our article ends by discussing the results in light of the polyarchy and the digital democracy models and highlighting new steps towards effective democratic communication policies and participation.

Communication capacity of NHC entities in digital media: are there significant asymmetries among segments?

This work presents the results of a study that analyzed the processes and communication strategies by the entities represented in the National Health Council (NHC), 2018-2021 administration. The production of alternative communication by civil society constitutes one of the fundamental principles of democratic regimes for an important American institutionalist author (Robert Dahl). The emergence of the Internet and social networks has brought new demands for these organizations to disseminate their ideas and be present in this network society (Castells). Our study aimed to analyze the extent to which these entities are present in the digital media and to verify if there were significant differences in the communication capacity among the segments represented in the NHC. A survey was applied to the communication departments of the 42 NHC entities from September 2019 to February 2020. Thirty-four answers were obtained (81%). The results show the existence of 3 different levels of development in communication within these entities, regardless of the macro-institutional categories. Our article ends by discussing the results in light of the polyarchy and the digital democracy models and highlighting new steps towards effective democratic communication policies and participation.

The rise and fall of Umeå IK

ABSTRACT This essay addresses the rise and fall of the Swedish women’s club Umeå IK. The question is how a team from a city almost devoid of any football culture suddenly could become one of the most successful clubs in the world during the early 2000s? The theoretical basis consists of the concepts of local identity, glocalization and Manuel Castell’s analysis of the network society. The source material is a study of Umeå’s largest daily newspaper and eleven interviews. Umeå IK worked energetically to create a strong local network for a women’s club (consisting of good contacts with the municipality, high income from sponsors, good media coverage and high attendances). The university city of Umeå was dynamic and progressive, with a strong middle-class character. The population could identify with the team. However, the city’s volatility meant that the team did not get long-lasting significance in terms of the city’s identity.

THE THREAT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN SOCIAL NETWORK-THINKING

The COVID-19 pandemic creates various dynamics of uncertainty that impact morbidity, mortality, and economic damage. The dynamics of these threats are expanding in the globalization era through networks and national security into a multidimensional sphere that tends to be unpredictable (Starvridis, 2015). Social transformation is always marked with certainties. Therefore, scientific regulations are needed to guide various operations, which functions as a principle in adapting to the quick-changing socio-cultural dynamics. This study aims to analyze the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic and strategic thinking steps in the ethnographic framework of social network thinking. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with an ego-centric network approach. The research results show that through the network framework, it is possible to see threats that are relatively different from those that have existed so far (mainstream). Interhuman relationships and interactions between humans and viruses in networked societies will create a connection. A strategic step to deal with the dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic threats is the obligation to use masks. Masks can limit the virus' circulation in social environments, especially during face-to-face interaction and communication, as the mouth and nose are vital channels for the virus to enter and spread inside the human body. Researchers recommend the implementation of strategic handling to precisely detect and handle the spread of the virus as early as possible. This strategy is a preventive effort against further severe threats caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Additional practical handling is required, including the discipline of implementing health protocols, such as wearing masks under the supervision of authorities.

Network Society: Digital Empowerment or Disempowerment

New skills and avenues for participation and self-expression in a connected society are made possible by ICT. Digital empowerment refers to the multi-step process of gaining access to better networking, communication, and collaboration opportunities and boosting the competency of individuals and communities so that they can play an influential role in society as a result of these developments. in the modern age of information. The goal of this essay is to investigate the relationship between inequality of participation and the degree to which individuals are empowered or disempowered in network society governance systems. A qualitative critical secondary data analysis was performed, in which published data and communication theory were used. This analysis contends that questions of the relationship between democracy and democratization and the role of computer-mediated communication in political communication are at the heart of the Digital Divide. The current Digital Gap is anticipated to add to structural disparities in political involvement as the role of ICT systems in political communication expands. As much as this inequality works against democracy and the political empowerment of some, it also creates chances for greater political participation by others. That raises questions about the social strata best positioned to profit from the coming networked society's electronic administration.

Distributed Event-Triggered Synchronization for Complex Cyber–Physical Networks under DoS Attacks

With the continuous development of the networked society, the ability of cyber attackers is becoming increasingly intelligent, posing a huge threat to complex cyber–physical networks (CCPNs). Therefore, how to design a security strategy for CCPNs under attack has become an urgent problem to be solved, which promotes our work. The problem of the distributed event-triggered synchronization of CCPNs in the presence of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks is investigated in this paper. Firstly, a distributed event-triggered controller is designed such that all nodes of networks are synchronized without DoS attacks by relieving the communication occupancy rate of limited bandwidths. Meanwhile, Zeno and singular triggering behaviors are excluded to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed event-triggered strategy. Secondly, in view of the continuous switching of CCPNs topologies caused by DoS attacks, an event-triggered control (ETC) strategy is proposed to ensure the synchronization of CCPNs under DoS attacks. Meanwhile, the frequency and duration of tolerable DoS attacks that can ensure the stability of the systems are calculated. Finally, two examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Research on the Development of Bilibili in the Era of Big Data

Bilibili was established on June 26, 2009 as a video-sharing website. Competitors include Station A and other video software. "Brand Bank" and the user value it creates bring it high-quality user resources, sales channels and game operation reputation. Bilibili provides users with differentiated content and services, and implements a differentiation strategy. In different aspects, its competitive advantages are unique. It has a wide range of businesses, making use of boutique IP and clusters, as well as ACG industrial chain layout investment. Nowadays, the network has become a part of human life. It is connecting all of society as a whole at an extremely fast speed, forming a virtual "network society". The research topic is based on the reasons why Bilibili is popular with young people in this era. Through the research on this topic, the authors learned about the operation mode of Bilibili (attracting more excellent bloggers and viewers with original content), and put forward their own unique opinions and suggestions on how to further develop Bilibili under the current Internet.

Everyday movements and massive socio-cultural shifts in Iran

This article investigates the grounds for forming the ‘women, life, freedom’ movement in Iran, which has spread throughout the country since September 2022. In this article, relying on statistical data and social research, five significant shifts that Iranian society has experienced in the last few decades have been discussed. Each crucial component, such as Age, Generational, Gender, Population, and Reference Group shifts, demonstrates a part of the grounds of the late movement in the networked society framework. The article tries to better understand the 2022 social movement by combining and interrelating the five mentioned components.

Rural co-working: New network spaces and new opportunities for a smart countryside

Coworking has been a largely urban phenomenon although new initiatives are emerging in rural areas. Rural coworking is partly a response to the growing need for ICT, which is unevenly provided across rural areas, and partly to the social needs of freelancers and home-workers. By combining technological and social functions, coworking spaces can play key roles in the progress of a Smart Countryside, supporting digital, knowledge-based and creative entrepreneurs within rural places, thus reducing the need for extensive commuting and out-migration, particularly among younger and higher-skilled workers.As working practices evolve in the aftermath of Covid-19, these new physical spaces are expected to facilitate new network connections. Castells’ Network Society provides a valuable lens through which to investigate how coworking founders and managers promote a mix of internal and external networks that might create new, and superior, entrepreneurial opportunities. The research highlights strategies to promote collaboration as well as methods of adapting to meet new demands from rural workers in a range of rural settings. As an array of different rural coworking models evolve, we also reflect on the importance of inclusivity and identity in determining their relationship with other actors in the local economy.

Sociability Networks in the City of Bujumbura

Sociability Networks in the City of Bujumbura

Information and network space as a form of social organization

The focus of the paper is on illuminating the changes in civilization brought about by the computerization of all aspects of modern life and the identification of the underlying principles and particulars of the “network society’s” social structure. In order to achieve this, the key theories of the information society have been clarified, and the socio-cultural changes of the present have been revealed on the basis of these theories. It has been demonstrated that informatization and the subsequent development of information and communication technologies, as well as the Internet network that they have brought about, have changed reality more than the basic tenets of sociality. The principles of information and network space – whose properties dictate the characteristics of social interaction – have emerged as a result of technological advancements that have changed how we think about space. Human communities are still created on a mental (cultural and psychological) basis in the information age, just as they were in earlier eras, but they no longer have a distinct territorial boundary. As a result, the person experiences a noticeably reduced amount of pressure from external instructions and narratives in the information and network space. As a result, the person can communicate with others freely and without any external prerequisites or justifications, and as a result, the process of its self-determination may have a wide range of unique characteristics that call for a separate, in-depth study.

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies by Erik Davis

Reviewed by: High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies by Erik Davis Matt Southey erik davis. High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2019, Pp. 544. Erik Davis's most recent book, High Weirdness is a journey through the works of three authors: Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick. Davis effectively situates all three of these prolific authors within the weird religious milieu of 1970s America by analyzing three of their mystical experiences: McKenna's psychedelically motivated trip to the Amazon, Wilson's Cosmic Trigger experiences, and Dick's revelations in February and March 1974. Davis draws on philosophers such as Bruno Latour and William James to demonstrate that "the reality" his subjects explored was not a single thing, but an ontological plurality. Importantly, Davis argues that his authors were writing at the beginning of what he calls "network society," presaged by the techno-mystical swirl of 1970s America and then technically realized by the internet. In High Weirdness Davis's methodology is "weird naturalism," the tracking of anomalous events and experiences "not as signs of a 'separate reality' but as manifestations or mutations of this one" (11). Davis sees these authors as concerned with the immanent world rather than a transcendent one. In brief, all three authors experienced and wrote about religious encounters with strange entities which the authors tended to perceive as extraterrestrial intelligences. These authors also participated in religious practices which were often technologically revised versions of older esoteric traditions. Ultimately what ties these authors together is a sort of science-fiction aesthetic that makes religion and technology deeply relevant to each other. McKenna, for instance, saw psychedelics as a "psycho-technology" that allows humans to have a guaranteed mystical experience; no more meditating for years in a cave, just up the dosage until something happens. The authors were all deeply [End Page 475] American in their combination of a global religious awareness combined with knowledge of modern science. After experiencing several anomalous/mystical events around February and March 1974 ("2-3-74"), Dick began writing an enormous journal that has been called his "exegesis", due to his spiritual reflections. Davis's work with Dick's exegesis is particularly interesting since he clarifies many misunderstandings surrounding it. Davis was one of the editors who worked on The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick with Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson, and so he is able to shed light on some of the particular twists and turns of the massive corpus. A compelling case is made that Dick took part in the burgeoning hacker culture when he urged a Vancouver audience to "build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that'll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities" (286). Davis emphasizes the networked, or "netweird," world of the 1970s that drew from a huge smorgasbord of religious traditions and remixed them under the DIY ethos of "whatever works." Modernity made the spatial and temporal barriers to knowledge moot: Americans could now listen to a Tibetan teacher in the afternoon, and pick up an English translation of the I Ching at a bookshop right after. Miles of ocean and thousands of years of history were no obstacle to the accelerating availability of knowledge. Davis is right to note that the effects of this information overload were not always beneficial, as each of the authors toed the edge of psychosis, or in the case of Dick, went right over. Davis does not shy away from this point: the superabundance of information and reality-altering technologies have epistemically damaged the body politic. High Weirdness therefore often reads as an autopsy report on our contemporary condition. For example, Davis notes that "these days, it is Wilson's earlier portraits of warring conspiracies, memetic mind control, and chaotic reality breakdown that are proving … prophetic" (403). Nevertheless, the book still carries a conviction that it is important to wrestle with these strange currents and that it might even be good for one's mental health to do so. Davis calls his three writers futurists who "did not reflect the timeless 'Be Here Now' grok sought by many psychedelic mystics and spiritual seekers of...