Global communication and political culture in the semi-periphery: The rise of the Globo corporation

This article will offer a description and explanation of the rise of the Brazilian media corporation Globo by situating it in the context of the periphery and semi-periphery of the World System and the globalisation of communication. In particular it focuses upon the changing role that Globo has played in the construction of an elite-led political culture in Brazil that has moved through phases of authoritarian and democratic government. The article sets out an historical account of the emergence of Globo from being a regional media organisation in the periphery of the world system to a global broadcaster in the semi-periphery. It moves through three phases: First, 1925–1964, the colonial legacy and Brazil in the periphery; second, 1964–1985, a period of transition and conservative modernisation, into the semi-periphery; and finally, 1985 onwards, the age of globalisation

Structural changes in the interbank market across the financial crisis from multiple core-periphery analysis

Interbank markets are often characterised in terms of a core-periphery network structure, with a highly interconnected core of banks holding the market together, and a periphery of banks connected mostly to the core but not internally. This paradigm has recently been challenged for short time scales, where interbank markets seem better characterised by a bipartite structure with more core-periphery connections than inside the core. Using a novel core-periphery detection method on the eMID interbank market, we enrich this picture by showing that the network is actually characterised by multiple core-periphery pairs. Moreover, a transition from core-periphery to bipartite structures occurs by shortening the temporal scale of data aggregation. We further show how the global financial crisis transformed the market, in terms of composition, multiplicity and internal organisation of core-periphery pairs. By unveiling such a fine-grained organisation and transformation of the interbank market, our method can find important applications in the understanding of how distress can propagate over financial networks.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 1 tabl

(WP 2018-04) Economics and Economic Methodology in a Core-Periphery Economic World

This paper uses a core-periphery distinction to characterize contemporary economics, economic methodology, and also today’s world economy. First, it applies the distinction to the organization of contemporary economics through an examination of the problem of explaining economics’ relations to and boundaries with other disciplines. Second, it argues that economics’ core-periphery organization is replicated in a similar organization of the use and practice of contemporary economic methodology in economics Third, it draws on the use of the core-periphery thinking in economics itself and the uneven development of the world economy to provide possible foundations for economics and economic methodology being organized in core-periphery terms. Fourth, the paper briefly discusses three as a potential countervailing forces operating on the development of contemporary economics that might work against its core-periphery organization

Trends of centre-periphery polarization in Sverdlovsk region between 2008 and 2015

The significant imbalances in the economic space of a region, particularly between the centre and the periphery, present a serious challenge for economists, politicians and policy makers. Which measures are to be taken to remedy this situation? What should they be aimed at? These are the main questions to be addressed by the researchers and the government. To develop a competent policy it is essential to understand the dynamics of intra-regional variations in a long-time period. This article seeks to describe the trends in the centre-periphery polarization dynamics of a Russian region by analyzing the indicators of socio-economic development of its constituent municipalities. In their calculations the authors used the coefficient of centre-periphery variation and the methods of statistical analysis. The comparative analysis of the contribution made by peripheral and central municipalities to the key socio-economic indicators of the region in the period of 2008-2015 has shown that there is a growing centre-periphery polarization within Sverdlovsk region. The authors calculated the coefficient of centre-periphery variation for specific municipalities and the periphery in general by using the average volume indices of the retail turnover, investments in the main capital, new housing supply, the turnover of organizations and average monthly salary. The dynamics of this coefficient and that of the GRP in the given period demonstrates that while the centre-periphery gap is narrowed during the recession, it widens when the economic situation stabilizes. The scientific novelty of this research is achieved through identifying the main trends in the centre-periphery polarization within Sverdlovsk region at various stages of its socio-economic development. These research results can be applied to develop a regional policy aimed at reducing the centre-periphery differences and polarization of the regional economic space.This research was supported by RFBR, research project No.17-32-00016 ‘Responses of Peripheral Urban Districts to Changes in the Parameters of Regional Economy during the Implementation of the Local Government Reform’

Exploring the Impact of Socio-Technical Core-Periphery Structures in Open Source Software Development

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the sociotechnical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements

Finding multiple core-periphery pairs in networks

With a core-periphery structure of networks, core nodes are densely interconnected, peripheral nodes are connected to core nodes to different extents, and peripheral nodes are sparsely interconnected. Core-periphery structure composed of a single core and periphery has been identified for various networks. However, analogous to the observation that many empirical networks are composed of densely interconnected groups of nodes, i.e., communities, a network may be better regarded as a collection of multiple cores and peripheries. We propose a scalable algorithm to detect multiple non-overlapping groups of core-periphery structure in a network. We illustrate our algorithm using synthesised and empirical networks. For example, we find distinct core-periphery pairs with different political leanings in a network of political blogs and separation between international and domestic subnetworks of airports in some single countries in a world-wide airport network.Comment: 11 figures and 9 tables. MATLAB codes are available at www.naokimasuda.net/cp_codes.zi