Community, network or both? Towards a holistic approach to studying online social structures

This paper overviews scientific narratives surrounding communities and networks both off- and online and criticizes the dichotomous approach to the topic, according to which each social structure can be classified as either a community or a network. It is argued that such a division does not facilitate comprehension of the contemporary online social structures with their complexity and dynamism. The study provides an alternative view on the issue assuming that community and network are not mutually exclusive concepts and can be studied holistically. The proposed theoretical statement is operationalized and piloted on the example of ‘Aarhus Internationals’ Facebook group – an online venue for international expats in Denmark. A content analysis of the group`s posts showed how exactly community and network aspects of social structures may coexist and interact online

Improvement of terminological approaches to innovation notion definition Улучшение терминологических подходов к определению понятия «инновация»

The article traces evolution of the innovation notion, generalises different approaches to its definition as a basic notion in the innovation sphere and conducts their critical study and analysis. It reveals specific features of the national content of the innovation term, which is formed at the turn of two different scientific trends, which define innovations both as a process and result respectively, considers and analyses in detail specific features of the national innovation legislation using example of the main innovation regulatory-legal act – the Law of Ukraine “On Innovation Activity” – identifies main shortcomings of the legislative terminology and outlines determining directions of their overcoming. The article considers international practice and stable standards of formation of innovation terminology. It also offers the innovation term definition from the point of view of its content, risk factor and transformations, which innovation undergoes on the way to practical introduction.<br>В статье прослеживается эволюция понятия «инновация», обобщаются различные подходы к его определению как основоположного и краеугольного понятия в инновационной сфере, проводится их критическое исследование и анализ. Раскрываются особенности национального наполнения термина инноваций, которое формируется на стыке двух различных научных течений, определяющих инновации соответственно как процесс и как результат, рассматривается и детально анализируется специфика национального инновационного законодательства на примере основного инновационного нормативно-правового акта – Закона Украины «Про инновационную деятельность» – определяются основные недочеты законодательно закрепленной терминологии и очерчиваются определяющие направления их преодоления. Рассматривается международная практика и устойчивые стандарты формирования инновационной терминологии. Также предлагается определение термина «инновация» с позиции их содержательного наполнения, фактора риска и преобразований, которые претерпевает инновация на пути к практическому внедрению

A generalized hypothesis test for community structure and homophily in networks

Networks continue to be of great interest to statisticians, with an emphasis on community detection. Less work, however, has addressed this question: given some network, does it exhibit meaningful community structure? We propose to answer this question in a principled manner by framing it as a statistical hypothesis in terms of a formal and general parameter related to homophily. Homophily is a well-studied network property where intra-community edges are more likely than between-community edges. We use the metric to identify and distinguish between three concepts: nominal, collateral, and intrinsic homophily. We propose a simple and interpretable test statistic leveraging this parameter and formulate both asymptotic and bootstrap-based rejection thresholds. We prove its asymptotic properties and demonstrate it outperforms benchmark methods on both simulated and real world data. Furthermore, the proposed method yields rich, provocative insights on four classic data sets; namely, that meany well-studied networks do not actually have intrinsic homophily