engleski

Recognising Networks in Cultural Field: Network Models in Real and Virtual Sphere

In recent years networks have become a focus of attention in different fields. According to research in various fields - from mathematics and biology to social sciences and culture - network seems to be the widely spread organization structure. In the extensive literature on the network society, networks are described to be its basic organizational form. Many existing social, technical or biological phenomena are recognized to have a network structure but definitions vary from field to field. It is especially recognized in the ICT applications, where network structure seems to be the element that has changed the logic of our everyday work, so ICT networks have become one of the most prominent social phenomena of our times. ICT networking environment has enabled development of many on-line resources and cultural sector has gone virtual a decade ago. But before that happened, cultural networks were already recognized phenomena that have been facilitating international cultural cooperation in the past two decades. Despite the numerous network definitions it seams that term network has different meanings and when we switch from cultural network (community) to ICT network (infrastructure) we are talking about different kinds of networks. Their characteristics are not the same, but their differences are sometimes blurred with different uses of the term network. We shall survey different network definitions and analyze various networking meta-structures that can be recognized in the various cultural networks and portals.

cultural networks; cultural portals; networking meta-structures

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