Bilgi Toplumunun Tarihi

Many researchers/authors try to explain what information society is, how it appeared in the first place and what the components of such a society are. In this contest, Armand Mattelart also tries to answer these questions in his work named The Information Society: An Introduction. The author indicates that the main purpose of this book is to define the concepts, discussions and reviews related to the information society

The measurement of territorial differences in the information infrastructure in Hungary and the South Transdanubian Region

The information society has become a crucial area of the socio-economic processes over the last two to three decades, yet it was unable to reduce the differences between the development levels of different regions. The developed regions perform better and poorer regions have weaker performance in the development of info-communication technologies. It can be assumed that the lack of the info-communication tools may broaden the divide between the developed and underdeveloped regions. Therefore, it is important to measure and mitigate these differences. The results of such measurements may contribute to the formation of the regional development policy issues. This paper focuses on the analysis of the factors that play a role in the information society. These factors can help to characterize the information society on both the national and the sub-national level. Our goal is to investigate the territorial inequalities in the information society on a highly disaggregated level since the article studies the relative development of the settlements in the South Transdanubian Region. As a methodological background, we introduce a new and composite index referred to as “the territorial index of information society”, which relies on settlement and micro-regional level data collected by the Central Statistical Office of Hungary and other private institutions. Our results indicate that the best performing settlements are in micro-regions with advantageous positions and that they are the more populated towns or locate within their agglomeration. The less populated settlements in an underdeveloped micro-region have a more disadvantageous position in the information society. Therefore, the information readiness may create differences in a similar way to economic developmen

The concept of community and the character of networks

Many case studies have examined Community Networks and we have at hand a good many rich and well grounded accounts of local experiences and outcomes as they have been observed in local circumstances. This sort of detailed, highly contextualized empirical work is essential to an understanding of contingent phenomena such as the performance of a Community Network. What we also need though, are theoretical approaches that are abstract enough to interpret the character and performance of differently situated Community Networks. The concept of community, the character of networks, and the implications of marrying the two, need to be teased out. To this end, I suggest that Community Networks be understood analytically as amodern hybrids that derive their ontological characteristics from a conflation of binaries. From this analytic perspective the Community Network is seen to be a sociotechnical assemblage that hybridizes the social and the technical, and not a set of technologies brought to bear on the social. The innovative feature of this particular form of sociotechnical assemblage, from an analytic point of view, is that it brings together community and network as both ontological concepts and as empirically observable phenomenon. The characterization of the assemblage as a community but also as a network is thus critiqued, and the differences between these two abstractions are explored, and it is further argued that the contrary ontology of the assemblage manifest structures that are at once heterarchic, and hierarchic

Captain America protecting digital rights: “old school” national law vs. emerging internet complexities in Azerbaijan

It is indicated in the article that emerging information technologies influences human rights norms in any democratic society. Especially, the Internet has changed the traditional approach to methods of ensuring human rights, while adding new challenges at the same time, such as regulating cybersecurity, digital data protection, digital freedom of information, privacy, discrimination in the Internet, etc. The traditional flow of information through newspapers, radio and television is currently combined with new means of exchanging digital information, mobile and satellite communications, the Internet and other technological advances. Of course, these innovations make governments to review traditional human rights legislation to stay fit and updated. Yet, some fundamental norms of national human rights legislation should remain unchangeable. Simply put, it looks like Captain America from the movie “Avengers” – a very old guy who develops his abilities to defeat dangers, but also preserves “old school” strength and leadership skills. In the light of these issues, the present article is devoted to the analysis of the conceptual foundations of national legislation in Azerbaijan on the protection of digital rights in the Internet. The article emphasizes that digital rights themselves are one of the factors demonstrating the strong impact of communication technologies on human rights, especially information rights and freedom of expression

From Everyday Information Behaviours to Clickable Solidarity

Digital social media has, in many ways, transformed the way people create, maintain, and sustain their social information networks, and has also influenced their information-related behaviours such as searching, seeking, finding and use of information. This is especially true in technologically-mediated environments. In many ways, social media is the contemporary incarnation of the Internet itself. It is a complex information-and-communication environment, very much analogous to physical environments, but consisting of symbolic matter rather than physical matter. All social situations are information environments and social media is no different. This paper is an inter-disciplinary literature-review essay that examines the social media phenomenon using the lens of selected theories in information science and allied disciplines such as communication and media ecology with a specific focus toward its possible role in civil society using the conceptual framework of spatial metaphors drawn from the study of traditional physical environments. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v5i3.348