Network Society Research Articles

Integrating Technologies Into Citizenship Training -EpC-: A Case Study With A Technological-Political Focus in the Colombian Context

Objective: the objective of this study was to investigate the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on the pedagogical practices of Education for Citizenship (EpC) in educational institutions in the Nariño department, Colombia, to identify opportunities, tensions, and transformations in the integration of technology into the curriculum. Theoretical Framework: it was based on conceptual frameworks such as the Didactics of Social Sciences mediated by technology, the technopolitical approach, and network society theory. These models highlight how technologies reshape social and educational dynamics, thus promoting critical citizenship skills and learning that is contextualized in both global and local realities. Method: a multiple case study design was adopted, which included the participation of four educational institutions. Data collection was carried out through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and non-participant observations. These methods allowed for the analysis of teaching practices mediated by ICT and their relationship with the curricular objectives of EpC. The analysis was conducted in phases of selection, prediction, and interpretation, identifying emerging patterns and categories. Results and Discussion: the results show that ICT is a key tool for promoting digital literacy and civic participation, but face limitations such as the digital divide and lack of teacher training. In the discussion, these findings are contextualized in theories such as technopolitics, highlighting how ICT transforms teaching towards more critical and participatory approaches. The identified tensions include the limited instrumentalization of ICT and their underutilized potential to generate profound changes in educational practices.

MOVIMENTOS SOCIAIS DIGITAIS E DESIGUALDADES NA SOCIEDADE EM REDE

This work aims to analyze the social transformations occurring in the digital age, with an emphasis on new forms of inequality and the role of digital social movements in the context of globalization and neoliberalism. Initially, it addresses the transition to the network society, based on Manuel Castells’ theories, exploring how digital technologies reconfigure social, economic, and cultural interactions. Next, it discusses the concept of digital inequalities and social exclusion, drawing on studies by Jan van Dijk and Mark Warschauer, highlighting how unequal access to information technologies reinforces existing social inequalities. The research also investigates the emergence of digital social movements and networked activism, analyzing their dynamics and strategies in light of contributions from Zeynep Tufekci and Manuel Castells. Emblematic cases such as the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter are examined, evidencing the impact of digital technologies on social mobilization and the promotion of change. Finally, it discusses the impact of neoliberalism and globalization on contemporary social structures, including the precariousness of work and recent economic crises, grounding the discussion in the theories of David Harvey and Saskia Sassen. The methodology adopted is qualitative in nature, based on a critical literature review of the main sociological theories related to the theme. The results point to the need to understand the complexity of social dynamics in the digital age and recognize the importance of digital social movements in combating new forms of inequality. It is concluded that sociology plays a fundamental role in analyzing and understanding contemporary social phenomena, contributing to the construction of a more just and inclusive society in the era of globalization and digital technologies.

Транснациональная городская сеть: основные свойства и характеристики, вопросы генезиса

This article is devoted to the transnational network of cities in the emerging global space of flows, represented by characteristic nodal structures and various material and intangible transboundary flows. The purpose of the article is to study the issues of the genesis of cities – international centers of influence as nodal structures of the global space of flows, the analysis of the key characteristics and properties of the global urban network. The methodological basis of the study is presented by the approaches of the concepts of neoliberalism, transregionalism, considering sub-state territorial entities as actors of world politics, as well as the spatial approach, the concepts of multi-level governance and network society. The key role of cities – international centers of influence in the global space of flows was identified, their key properties and characteristics in this capacity were identified. It is determined that the development or degradation of a megalopolis – a network node, is determined by its transnational flows, and the main properties of the transnational urban network are multi-level, hierarchical nature, and a variety of network flows. The term is proposed and a definition of a transnational global urban network is given.

MEASURING THE DIGITAL LITERACY LEVELS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE CONTEXT OF DISINFORMATION PROBLEM IN DIGITAL MEDIA

In the globalizing world with the rapid development and spread of internet technology in the information and communication age, the transition from the information society to the network society has brought many problems, either explicitly or implicitly, besides many advantages. Especially the negative effects of digital addiction in Generation Z, which is born in the digital age and expressed as digital natives, and the fact that the audience is not aware of this situation or does not believe that it has negative effects makes it necessary to conduct research on the subject. On the other hand, the phenomenon of disinformation, which means the deliberate creation and dissemination of false and misleading information, emerges as an important problem with the spread of digital mass media. Starting from this perspective, firstly the concepts of digital media, disinformation and digital literacy were explained in this study and then a digital literacy scale was applied to university students. As a result of the study; it was found that the digital literacy levels of university students were significantly higher than the critical level in general.

Inequality and Poverty in the Digital Age

As a result of the technological revolution, there is a doubling of the reality in which modern man operates. Many resources, activities, public and private services are moving to a virtual environment. Along with the phenomena of the surrounding world that are familiar to people, their digital varieties arise, closely interacting with their real-life counterparts. The article is devoted to digital inequality and digital poverty, the evolution of approaches to their study in domestic and foreign academic literature. It is concluded that the theories explaining their existence organically complement each other, giving an idea of the necessary and sufficient conditions for full human participation in the life of a network society. The coverage of different segments of the population with new technologies was not uniform. Special attention is paid to the factors preventing vulnerable segments of the population within the European Union from taking full advantage of technological innovations and fully participating in society. The division of society into digitally engaged and outsiders is a big social and political problem that humanity will have to deal with in the 21st century.

The Right to Difference: Identity and Self-Expression in Contemporary Citizenship

This paper examines how contemporary citizenship is increasingly shaped by diverse personal identities and their public expression. Assuming that contemporary innovations (LGBTQIAPN+ aggregations, the expansion of abortion for women and assistance for consensual individual deaths, studies into differentiated human conditions – objective and subjective – ethnic-racial emergencies – traditional or not – and care for specific corporealities) have unprecedentedly taken on human differences as citizenship rights, the author defends the thesis that the emerging network society stems from a contemporary tendency towards generalized competition for intimate self-exposure. By applying the concept of Agonistic Gift (Marcel Mauss), which referred to competitions between donors of works or activities, it is arguable that contemporaneity is a diversifying sociability because intimacy has become the object of competitive generosity. In order to explore this point, the author inductively selected and analyzed an interview with digital influencer Giovanna Titanero, who was selected because her followers adopt several different or even opposing lifestyles, to discuss the exponential contemporary social plurality and, by recovering the notion of community diversity (Ludwig Feuerbach), concludes that parliamentary self-reforms can make democracies representative of emerging human and cultural diversity.

Interdisciplinary, AI-Interoperable, and Universal Skills for Foreign Languages Education in Emergency Digitization

Transformative potential of the knowledge economy of the XXI century, establishment of networked society, emergency digitization due to the pandemic and wartime measures have imposed elaborate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary demands on the marketability of Liberal Arts university graduates' skills and competences, upon entering the workforce. The study is focused on the in-depth diagnostics of the development of multipurpose orientation, universality and interdisciplinarity of skillsets for students of European (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German) and Oriental (Mandarin Chinese, Japanese) Languages major programs through the span of educational activities in the time-frame of sustainable and emergency digitization measures of 2020-2024 in Ukraine. A computational framework of foreign languages education interdisciplinarity is introduced in the study. The survey analysis is used to evaluate the dimensions of interdisciplinarity, universality and transdiciplinarity, informed by the interoperability of soft skills and digital communication skills for Foreign Languages Education across contrasting timeframes and stages of foreign languages acquisition and early career training.

Récits de l’entente criminelle dans la « société en réseaux » : Quelles reconfigurations littéraires pour quels complots ?

This article argues that contemporary fictions of organized crime reinscribe, in many ways, the imaginary of conspiracy in narrative structures rooted in immediate history, while aiming to critique new ramified and diffuse systems of power. Which procedures are used to uncover the secrecy surrounding these organizations? How do these works reformulate concerns about the localization of power in today’s “network society” that has emerged with economic globalization? Using examples from contemporary Italian literature, I will examine the ways in which authors write about mafia practices, accompanying the social sciences’ reclassification of organized crime as a phenomenon of power. I will also ponder the effects generated by these narratives, in which the distancing of conspiracy theories does not exclude certain reformulations of them with other terms.

Effects of regional network economies on industrial productivity in Japan: dynamic total factor productivity function approach

Improving productivity performance is essential for achieving regional economic sustainability. With the advent of the network society, regional economic agents have benefited not only from local within-region interactions but also from external out-of-region economies. However, it remains unclear whether localized external economies or spillovers of externalities through inter-regional networks are more significant in improving productivity performance. Therefore, this study examined the relationships between productivity performance and geographical externalities from an industry perspective using regional economic data for Japan and employed a dynamic total factor productivity function approach. It also assessed the impact of high-quality transportation infrastructure improvements on productivity catch-up. The results revealed the long-run effects of inter-regional networks on the productivity performance of industries. Furthermore, it revealed that, as a geographical externality, the “borrowed size” effect contributed significantly to productivity improvements in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. These findings suggest that enhancing both high-quality transportation infrastructure and inter-regional transportation networks is likely to improve industry productivity performance.

Legislative rebellions and impeachments in a neural network society.

Inspired by studies of legislative-executive conflict in modern presidential democracies in South America, we present an agent-based statistical mechanics exploration of the collective, coordinated action of strategic political actors in the legislative chamber and the conditions that may result in premature changes in the executive officeholder, such as a president's impeachment or a motion of no confidence in a prime minister. The legislative actors are represented by information processing agents equipped with a neural network, and emit opinions about issues in the presidential agenda. We construct a Hamiltonian which is the sum of the costs for the agents to hold a specific set of political positions. We use replica methods for two types of disorder, in the space of weights and in the network of agents' interactions. We obtain the phase diagram of the model, where the control parameters may be loosely described as indices measuring the strategic legislative support, the presidential polling popularity and the volume of the presidential agenda under discussion. It shows an intermediate phase of coexistence of pro and con strategic behavior. This region is surrounded by pure phases where the strategic vote falls completely in the pro or con camps. Driven by external forces, the change of these indices may lead the system out of the coexistence region into the purely anti-executive phase, triggering a phase transition into a state opposing the executive leader and supporting their removal from office by constitutional means. We use data from Brazil, and show the presidential trajectories that led to impeachment or not during the democratic period which began in 1989. These trajectories ended in the region of the phase diagram in accordance to the president being removed or not from office.

The Postdigital Panorama

University teachers are in the midst of a messy and entangled postdigital era. They face a constant stream of data and increasingly visible teaching as a consequence of digital media and AI spaces. This prompts the need for identity work to reconsider the personal, professional and societal meanings of the role of teachers in a world where people and machines are becoming further interwoven. Narrowing it down to social media spaces that encompass context collapse, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between personal and professional facets of life. Higher education teachers, who contribute to social media, construct fluid, greatly changeable and intermingled identities. The current study aims to conceptualise the practices and roles that may guide these emerging identities using a theoretical vignette as a tool. The presented case can initiate the discussions on who we are and who we are becoming in the current realities and prompt questions about learning and teaching in the networked society.

미래 학교 교육과정 체제로서의 다중심성 교육과정 생성·공유 체제

Objectives This study recognizes the need to explore a school curriculum system that responds to the changes brought about by the future hyper-connected networks, artificial intelligence era, and intelligent information society. As an alternative to the traditional Research, Development, and Dissemination (RDD) system of curricu-lum, we investigated the creation and sharing system of a polycentric curriculum. Methods To achieve the research objectives, we conducted two rounds of Delphi surveys with 50 education ex-perts, based on scenario construction for the future school curriculum system. Additionally, we carried out a per-ception survey targeting a total of 3,409 participants, including students, parents, teachers, and educational professionals. This was complemented by a semantic network analysis. Results The results of the first and second rounds of Delphi surveys with experts confirmed seven scenarios re-lated to the development and creation of future curricula. There was a high response rate of agreement on the an-ticipated scenarios related to curriculum development and creation in response to societal changes. Additionally, the semantic network analysis revealed that keywords such as individual student curricula, online networks, con-vergence and fusion curricula, online open markets, and digital and artificial intelligence technologies best repre-sent the characteristics of future curriculum development and creation. Conclusions In a future hyper-connected network society built on the integration of advanced digital information and artificial intelligence technologies, the traditional curriculum research, development, and dissemination sys-tem will transition to a polycentric curriculum creation and sharing system. Consequently, future curricula will be based on connected networks, establishing a unified system that will activate network-based curricula. This net-work curriculum system will form an educational ecosystem centered around educational stakeholders, function-ing through connected networks like a living organism.

Sustainable and Bio-based Food Packaging Design of Chinese Agricultural Products Under the “Internet Plus” Mindset

National identity is people's emotional attachment to the country, which is related to personal growth and success as well as the prosperity and stability of the country. The advent of the "Internet Plus" era marks a new ecological evolution in the networked society, significantly impacting personal national identity. On the one hand, the proactive, dynamic, autonomous, and connective nature of "Internet Plus" provides abundant resources and novel platforms to enhance individual national identity. On the other hand, its openness, compatibility, diversity, and anonymity can also challenge and influence personal perceptions of national belonging. This study delves into the nuanced interplay between national identity and the packaging design of Chinese agricultural products within the "Internet Plus" framework, exploring emerging trends, changes, and characteristics. This paper presents an in-depth literature assessment on the comprehensive methodology of Bio-based Food Packaging (B-FP) for food within the cyclical economy. It emphasizes three principal domains: (1) the function of B-FP within a circular goods layout method and material selection during the preproduction life cycle phase; (2) the contribution of B-FP to oval resource administration structures and the item's elimination life cycle phase; and (3) the optimum utilization of B-FP concerning the prioritization of end-of-life therapy. It scrutinizes the underlying issues and deep-seated causes, enriching the theoretical discourse on national identity. Through literature review and surveys, this paper firstly defines and clarifies the concepts of "Internet Plus," national identity, and the B-FP design of Chinese agricultural products. It then investigates the implications of "Internet Plus" for national identity within pastoral product B-FP design, examining its supportive role. Furthermore, survey data is analyzed to evaluate the impact of B-FP design on national identity from various aspects such as structure, visual appeal, and the absence of green design principles. Identifying key challenges and attributing them to factors such as brand competitiveness and rural revitalization strategies, the study ultimately seeks to formulate design strategies for agricultural product B-FP from a national identity perspective within the "Internet Plus" context.

Evolution and Elements of Collaborative Governance Theory

With the advancement of globalization and the formation and development of a network society, there have been governance issues that cross departments, organizations, regions, and national borders, including environmental protection, immigration, international trade disputes, and digital government construction. Such a “thorny” problem is difficult to solve by a single organization, so cross-border collaborative governance has become increasingly important. In such an interdependent world, collaborative governance has begun to be widely concerned by academic circles. The attention to the theory of collaborative governance reached its first peak at the third Minobrook Conference and has gradually become a hot topic in the field of public administration in the last ten years. This paper focuses on the historical background of the evolution and development of collaborative governance theory, sorts out the definitions of collaborative governance by scholars at home and abroad, and introduces the main components of collaborative governance in the initial stage, process stage, and result stage. These achievements have certain reference significance for understanding collaborative governance.

Power in the conditions of communicative risk-generation of network society

Power in the conditions of communicative risk-generation of network society

Classrooms to Networks: Applying Connectivism Principles in Pedagogy ```

The integration of digital technologies has led to a significant transformation in educational practices, shifting from traditional classroom models to more dynamic, networked learning environments. This paper explores the concept of connectivism, a learning theory developed by Siemens and Downes, which emphasizes the importance of networks, connectivity, and collaboration in acquiring knowledge. Unlike traditional pedagogies that focus on content delivery, connectivism promotes the creation and navigation of networks to facilitate continuous learning. Key principles of connectivism include the diversity of opinions, the distribution of knowledge across networks, and the critical role of digital tools in learning processes. The paper discusses the practical applications of connectivism approaches in contemporary pedagogy, focusing on how educators can transform traditional classrooms into engaging, networked learning spaces. Despite its theoretical strengths, the implementation of connectivism faces challenges, including technological access, information management, and the need for pedagogical adaptation. Through this exploration, the paper aims to provide insights into how connectivism can enhance educational practices and prepare students for the complexities of a rapidly evolving, networked society.

An adaptive differential evolution algorithm driven by multiple probabilistic mutation strategies for influence maximization in social networks

Influence maximization is a critical research topic of social network analysis, particularly with the increasing involvement of individuals in the global networked society. The purpose of the problem is to identify k influential nodes from the social network and activate them initially to maximize the expected number of influenced nodes at the end of the spreading process. Although some meta-heuristics based on swarm intelligence or biological evolution have been proposed to tackle this intractable problem, further investigation is required to refine the exploration and exploitation operations based on the iterative information from the evolutionary process. In this paper, an adaptive differential evolution algorithm driven by multiple probabilistic mutation strategies is proposed for the influence maximization problem. In order to enhance the evolutionary capability of the later stages of the discrete differential evolution, the mutation in the framework, consisting of three policies, namely comprehensive learning particle swarm mutation strategy, differential mutation strategy, and perturbation strategy, is implied based on different probabilistic models. An adaptive local search strategy is presented to improve the local optimum results based on a potential alternative library consisting of structural hole nodes, which guides the differential evolution to find a more optimal solution. Experimental results on six real-world social networks demonstrate the competitive performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of both efficacy and efficiency compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.

Легитимность насилия в техногенном обществе

The author examines the transformation of violence as a way of survival into “violence of power”, characteristic of modern civilization, the legitimacy of its legitimization, the use of resources of the information network society, technogenic civilization to regulate internal and external state relations, and new management perspectives. The legitimacy of the activities of states that claim the right to identify weak, dying or failed states as the source of modern political violence, instability and threats, and to carry out "humanitarian missions" against them, is called into question. The types of violence that are logically built into the development system of modern technogenic society, such as economic, institutional, and informational, are considered. Attention is drawn to the effectiveness of new technologies for the introduction of military innovations and the development of military potential in support of external legitimate state violence. The inability of modern society to control and regulate increasingly complex information systems and the tendency of the authorities to proactively assess negative consequences and prevent the possibility of their occurrence are emphasized. The mechanisms of a technogenic society contribute both to the control of the legitimacy of power and provide the power with the opportunity to control society. Therefore, a culture of peace can serve as a new trend in the development of humanity.

Scalable intimacy: Rethinking intimate sociality and its problem of scale in digital China

With the development of the Internet in China, people have increasingly turned to digital communication and networking tools for personal connections and social relations. From messaging and dating apps to microblogging and live-streaming platforms, mediated forms of sociality constitute a significant part of people’s intimate lives. Scholarly works on modern and contemporary China have shown how practices and politics of intimacy are formulated and contested against the backdrop of the tensions between the residual culture of Confucianism, the socialist ideological regime, and China’s participation in global capitalism. On the contrary, research on global network societies has foregrounded the role of information and media technologies in mediating intimacy with conceptual frameworks such as programmed sociality and networked intimacy. Bridging these two areas of research, this essay attempts to understand how intimate sociality is configured within China’s burgeoning digital economy and culture. It first provides a review of previous works on forms of intimacy and sociality mediated by network technologies ranging from mobile phones to online dating. Using the popularity of live streaming in current-day China as a case study, this essay then introduces the problem of “scale” to consider how intimacy is mediated at scale with Internet-based media technologies and discuss how scalability shapes intimate lives in Chinese society as a shared rationale behind modernization, network technologies, and new forms of economies. This essay proposes the concept of scalable intimacy to move beyond the platform-centered approach and develop a more contextualized framework for understanding intimate sociality in digital China.

On the Compatibility of the Democratic Rule of Law and the Self-Regulation of Meta: The Oversight Board as a Guardian of Freedom of Expression

The article examines the role of Meta in relation to the principles of the democratic Rechtsstaat. The perspective focuses on the importance of the human right to freedom of expression in a global network society, where Internet intermediaries, through their self-regulation and content moderation, have a crucial impact on the realisation of freedom of expression and, by extension, on democratic processes. Because of their influence, their self-regulatory systems can be seen as independent systems of norms, governed by fundamentally different principles from those of European nation-states committed to democracy, human rights and the rule of law – especially in the context of the European Union. This is of particular importance for public debate and the free expression of opinions, which are fundamental values in democratic societies. Social media both enables and, in some cases, limits the exercise of fundamental and human rights. They also share, or to some extent have even taken over, the institutional role of traditional media in society. The article takes a legal-theoretical approach to the subject matter, as it addresses the role of public debate in the digital environment as part of the legitimacy of the legal order itself. In this respect, the article analyses the relationship between Facebook and the public sphere, which is essential for democracy, and the role of the state in promoting freedom of expression in the online environment. The theoretical framework is based on Kaarlo Tuori's theory of the levels of law and the concept of democratic Rechtsstaat. Against this framework, Facebook/Meta is examined in a European context, which includes both the European Union and Council of Europe law. Most focus is put on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Through this framework, the role and position of the Oversight Board at the interface of human rights implementation and Meta's self-regulation will also be examined. Given the emphasis in the ECtHR's jurisprudence on the positive obligations imposed on the state, the article concludes that a more effective horizontal impact of fundamental and human rights is needed. This is supported by the conclusion that Facebook may not be considered as a well-suited public sphere for democracy.