Search results for "Network Theory"

RE-CONCEPTUALIZING A SICILIAN DESTINATION THROUGH THE ACTORNETWORK THEORY: THE ROLE OF A GASTRONOMIC FESTIVAL TO RUN THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF A TE…

2013

The paper describes San Vito Lo Capo – a tourist destination on the west cost of Sicily – by considering its human and not human (material and immaterial) elements. To depict this tourist destination, so to map and analyze the different involved elements and to understand the inner mechanisms of its functioning, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is exploited. A special focus is on the “Cous Cous Fest” and the role it’s played in the last seventeen years for the tourist (economic) development of the destination.

Social construction of quality in software development

2011

‘Disorderly conduct’: on the unruly rules of public communication in social network sites

2013

In this article, we examine typical styles and practices of public communication on social network sites (SNSs) in order to confront the traditional concept of publics as machines for creating order. Through an ethnographic case study of the SNS Facebook, we show how indeterminacy, ambiguity and constant irritation, rather than arguments or reason, produce the communicative order. A decidedly disorderly style of communication and connectivity emerges. Indeterminacy, from our point of view, is a solution to the problem of speaking privately in public and to an indefinite audience. We use these findings to problematize the insights of network theory and Niklas Luhmann's systems theory that on…

Geography versus topology in the European Ownership Network

2011

In this paper, we investigate the network of ownership relationships among European firms and its embedding in the geographical space. We carry out a detailed analysis of geographical distances between pairs of nodes, connected by edges or by shortest paths of varying length. In particular, we study the relation between geographical distance and network distance in comparison with a random spatial network model. While the distribution of geographical distance can be fairly well reproduced, important deviations appear in the network distance and in the size of the largest strongly connected component. Our results show that geographical factors allow us to capture several features of the netw…

Statistically validated networks in bipartite complex systems.

2011

Many complex systems present an intrinsic bipartite nature and are often described and modeled in terms of networks [1-5]. Examples include movies and actors [1, 2, 4], authors and scientific papers [6-9], email accounts and emails [10], plants and animals that pollinate them [11, 12]. Bipartite networks are often very heterogeneous in the number of relationships that the elements of one set establish with the elements of the other set. When one constructs a projected network with nodes from only one set, the system heterogeneity makes it very difficult to identify preferential links between the elements. Here we introduce an unsupervised method to statistically validate each link of the pr…

Children’s Play and Art Practices with Agentic Objects

2018

Material objects, ranging from used pieces of gum to superhero capes, are an essential part of children’s play and art practices. However, such items are rarely analyzed as a part of children’s social interaction. Onto-epistemological, scientific, and bio-technological developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have enhanced the interest in physical objects within many academic disciplines, and led some to consider if objects, too, can have social agency. In this article, I use Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT) to analyze three kinds of objects in the context of children’s play and art practices: (1) physical objects, (2) digital objects, and (3) transformative and ima…

The value of a network in the digital era: insights about Doctor Chat case study

2017

Networks are ubiquitous in our lives in their social, physical, and digital forms. A growing number of firms today rely entirely on networking and lack a physical location or material infrastructure; they are, so to speak, 'liquid'. Through a theoretical analysis and its application to the case of Doctor Chat mobile app, this paper aims to analyse the fundamental laws of networks and to answer the following questions: 1) are the traditional methods to estimate the network value still valid in the current digital age and in particular for mobile applications?; 2) how do the laws of networks work when networks expand? We conclude with some suggestions for a research agenda in order to inspire…

Aging well in the community: Understanding the complexities of older people's dial-a-ride bus journeys

2021

Older peoples' independent living in their own homes and their ability to move around and maintain social relations in their communities have been acknowledged as important aims to support their well-being. In this article, we study Special Transport Services as a means to support older persons with ‘aging in place’ – that is, within their communities. From “go-alongs” (shared dial-a-ride bus journeys) and “sit-down interviews” (at participant's home or a café) with 12 older people living in a Finnish suburb, we explored their everyday dial-a-ride bus trips to the local mall. We used actor-network theory and the concept of motility to show how at first glance what appeared to be simple dial…

Understanding the Strategies and Practices of Facebook Microcelebrities for Engaging in Sociopolitical Discourses

2022

In this paper, we study popular microcelebrities from the Global South to understand their strategies and practices on Facebook. Unlike traditional celebrities who gain their reputation through different types of physical performance, these microcelebrities attain their status by presenting themselves in a favorable way to their online followers. We conducted interviews with 19 microcelebrities from Bangladesh and analyzed our data using actor-network theory (ANT) and Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis (DA) of human interaction. We discuss the complex socio-technical ecosystem of the microcelebrity and the roles of non-human actors, such as platforms and local internet infrastructure along wi…

A holistic perspective on the theoretical foundations for ICT4D research

2018

While many theories have guided research Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), we are yet to construct a clear and coherent narrative that would help us answer the question of how ICT fosters development in underdeveloped communities. In this paper, we argue that one of the main reasons for this is that our holistic understanding of ICT4D is seldom grounded in theories to understand the core areas that define the field, namely, ICT, Development, and, ‘4’ which are the transformative processes that link the two. Through a brief literature review, we list theories that have informed ICT4D research in each of these areas. We present examples of theories, namely, C…