Network Leadership: on the Mechanism of Political Mobilization

The article attempts to develop an approach to describing the mechanism of network political mobilization by political leaders. The purpose was achieved through a pilot empirical study. In order to obtain data on the participants, means and methods of political mobilization in the network space the method of questioning was used. The audience of the research is students of universities of large Russian cities in the number of 83 people. Participants of research are selected by a method of purposeful sampling. The objectives of the analysis are also the communication environment of political leaders in the network space, technologies, methods and system of evaluation of interaction in social media. The results of the research confirmed the hypothesis of the deployment process of the phenomenon of network political leadership, identified and described trends in the communications of network leaders. Authors offered a methodology of research of network mobilization process through a prism of parameters of network involvement and online political support. The presence of these elements makes it possible to launch the mechanism of political mobilization in social networks. In the long term, the data obtained and the developed tools for empirical research can be useful in conducting large-scale political research, in particular, studying the phenomenon of political recruiting.

A Hierarchical Spatial Network Index for Arbitrarily Distributed Spatial Objects

The range query is one of the most important query types in spatial data processing. Geographic information systems use it to find spatial objects within a user-specified range, and it supports data mining tasks, such as density-based clustering. In many applications, ranges are not computed in unrestricted Euclidean space, but on a network. While the majority of access methods cannot trivially be extended to network space, existing network index structures partition the network space without considering the data distribution. This potentially results in inefficiency due to a very skewed node distribution. To improve range query processing on networks, this paper proposes a balanced Hierarchical Network index (HN-tree) to query spatial objects on networks. The main idea is to recursively partition the data on the network such that each partition has a similar number of spatial objects. Leveraging the HN-tree, we present an efficient range query algorithm, which is empirically evaluated using three different road networks and several baselines and state-of-the-art network indices. The experimental evaluation shows that the HN-tree substantially outperforms existing methods.

The communicative structure of network political leadership: Opportunities for empirical research

The phenomenon of the leadership in the network space is becoming the subject of modern Russian and foreign studies. At the same time, the phenomenon has not been determined. The article describes the communication structure of network leadership between the concepts of network leadership, blogger, and influencer, as well as the basis for the future empirical research.

Presence, Absence, and Alterity: Fire Space and Goffman’s Selves in Postdigital Education

The literature on space in higher education has arguably been dominated by the concept of ‘learning spaces’. In this paper, I will argue that this construct, while appearing student-focused and creative, is ideologically circumscribed by an underlying social constructivism. Following Bayne et al. (2014), I draw on science and technology studies to consider social topologies, in particular regional space, network space, and their proposed fluid space, and the work of Law and colleagues on the category of fire space, derived from Bachelard’s (The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 1964) disquisition on the nature of fire. I work with this construct in an analysis of postdigital education, in particular looking at synchronous interaction via video conferencing software such as Zoom. Linking this analysis to the work of Goffman and his concept of the lecturer selves (Goffman in Forms of Talk, 1981), I argue that the concept of fire space may allow for a more nuanced and accurate account of the flickering, contingent nature of (co) presence, absence, and alterity, allowing for a more immanent account of digital interaction in ‘distance’ or ‘online’ education.

THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF THE NETWORK SPACE AND LAW: SOME METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

In modern legal science, few studies are devoted to the issues of the legal nature of technical and physical phenomena that make up an encoded signal transmitted in the form of a file and containing a certain number of bits of information. At the same time, a set of questions relating to the legal nature of the information flow in its technical and physical sense and the legal nature of the transmitted signal from the emitter to the receiver remains unexplored. A closer look also reveals that the signal transmitted on the Internet by broadcasters is not unambiguous in terms of copyright law and principles. This, in turn, makes the issue of legal protection of the signal broadcast on the Internet topical. The paper suggests that the Web, the World Wide Web, is a continuous interaction of the physical (electrical) and information beginnings. Furthermore, physically the electric signal is transmitted in a coded form and has logically organized information content. This binary nature of the signal transmitted from source to consumer has not been properly described in legal studies. The purpose of the work is to study current trends in understanding the legal nature of the encoded electrical signal, transmitted in the network space by the relevant source and accepted by the consumer. The methods used in the research are of two types: firstly, this is a formal legal method associated with understanding and interpreting legal norms, clarifying the current situation in the legal regulation of the Internet space; secondly, the methods of analysis and synthesis, implying a consistent disclosure of the technical, social and cultural nature of the Internet space. The results of the study reveal the dual nature of the signal, which is a means of transmitting information on the information network. The nature of the signal (energy) has a coded form, which makes it possible to receive the information transmitted by the signal source. The legal regulation of the transmission and reception of such signals requires substantial additions.

A method for efficient clustering of spatial data in network space

Spatial clustering is one of the main techniques for spatial data mining and spatial data analysis. However, existing spatial clustering methods primarily focus on points distributed in planar space with the Euclidean distance measurement. Recently, NS-DBSCAN has been developed to perform clustering of spatial point events in Network Space based on a well-known clustering algorithm, named Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN). The NS-DBSCAN algorithm has efficiently solved the problem of clustering network constrained spatial points. When compared to the NC_DT (Network-Constraint Delaunay Triangulation) clustering algorithm, the NS-DBSCAN algorithm efficiently solves the problem of clustering network constrained spatial points by visualizing the intrinsic clustering structure of spatial data by constructing density ordering charts. However, the main drawback of this algorithm is when the data are processed, objects that are not specifically categorized into types of clusters cannot be removed, which is undeniably a waste of time, particularly when the dataset is large. In an attempt to have this algorithm work with great efficiency, we thus recommend removing edges that are longer than the threshold and eliminating low-density points from the density ordering table when forming clusters and also take other effective techniques into consideration. In this paper, we develop a theorem to determine the maximum length of an edge in a road segment. Based on this theorem, an algorithm is proposed to greatly improve the performance of the density-based clustering algorithm in network space (NS-DBSCAN). Experiments using our proposed algorithm carried out in collaboration with Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam yield the same results but shows an advantage of it over NS-DBSCAN in execution time.

The Influence Mechanism of Ettringite Crystals and Microstructure Characteristics on the Strength of Calcium-Based Stabilized Soil

To reveal the influence mechanism of ettringite (AFt) crystals and microstructure characteristics on the strength of calcium-based stabilized soil, the strengths and microscopic properties of seven groups of stabilized soil samples were studied systematically through unconfined compressive strength, scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetry (TG), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) testing methods. The results indicate that the strength of the cement-stabilized soil is relatively high because abundant calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) gels coat the outer surface of soil particles to cement together. For the cement–gypsum-stabilized soil, superabundant thick and long AFt crystals make the pores in soil particles larger, and the sample becomes looser, resulting in lower strength than that of the cement-stabilized soil. However, the strength of the cement–gypsum–lime-stabilized soil is slightly stronger than that of the cement-stabilized soil, for the reason that the appropriate amount of fine AFt crystals fill the macropores between soil particles to form a network space structure and sufficient CSH gels cement the soil particles and the AFt crystals network space structure tightly together. It could be suggested that the components of calcium-based stabilizer should consider the optimal production balance between CSH gels and fine AFt crystals.

On the Specificity of the Formation, Distribution and Translation of Memory in the Network Space

The article analyzes the main approaches in Russian and foreign literature in the study of the formation and functioning of memory in networks. The duality of interest in the topic of memory is noted. It is shown that, on the one hand, the network space opens up new perspectives for creating and distributing memory. Thus, digital technologies allow the creation, processing, storage and dissemination of information on a historically unprecedented scale, and many people with a wide variety of values, interests and expectations gain access to this information. Consumers may have alternative sources of information and need not use official archives. They can reproduce their personal historical experience by publishing family archives, articulating their own impressions of the past. Consumers get the opportunity for an individualized interpretation of the material. No wonder, many researchers mark the concept “prosumer” as blurring the lines between the consumer and the content producer. As a result, the formation of multidirectional memory and its decentralization are noted. Researchers highlight the abundance, ubiquity and responsiveness of digital media. At the same time, their institutionalized forms are supplemented, shifted and often forced to compete with information produced and disseminated by individual users. Moreover, contacts in and through digital media are not complementary to the usual forms of social interaction, but intertwined with them. On the other hand, the negative sides of the “boom” of memory, which researchers associate with the growth of amnesia intensified by this “boom”, and the deforming of commercialized memory are emphasized. First of all, it should be noted that openness also provided an opportunity to sound to the voices that can hardly be associated with democratic tendencies. This approach will enhance the nostalgic and thus mythologized memory. The role of the consumer context in which the interest in memory is realized is noted. This turns memory into just a type of product that is worth consuming simply to be modern. Also, the specificity of the functioning of communication provided by Internet platforms turns the past into one of the types of broadcast content and one of the tools for increasing the status of the user. It is not without reason that a number of authors believe that it is more reasonable to speak not about the “boom” of memory, but about the growing pace of oblivion, where the dominance of the above-described forms of memory only enhances it. I believe that attention to such forms of memory is necessary to increase reflexivity when discussing the issue of working out those productive goals and tasks that are assigned to the memory of the past.