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Organizing Technologies: Genre Forms of Online Civic Association in Eastern Europe

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University

László Bruszt

Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute (Florence)

David Stark

Columbia University

How do civic associations in Eastern Europe organize themselves online? Based on data collected on 1,585 East European civil society Web sites, the authors identify five emergent genres of organizing technologies: newsletters, interactive platforms, multilingual solicitations, directories, and brochures. These clusters do not correspond to stages of development. Moreover, newer Web sitesare morelikely to be typical of their genre,suggesting that forms are becoming more distinctive. In contrast to the utopian image of a de-territorialized, participatory global civil society, the authors’ examination of the structure of hyperlinks finds that transnational types of Web sites are not inclined to be participatory. Whereas other paradigms focus on inequality of users’ online access, the authors probe inequality in the accessibility of Web sites to potential users through search engine technology and show how this varies across different types of civil society Web sites.

Key Words: technology • Internet • civil society • Eastern Europe • participation • Web site analysis

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