Owing to the spectacular currency of information and communication technologies, the diffusion of innovations has become one of the most exciting research topics in the social sciences in the past decade. This study gives an account of the most basic types of growth functions, and then inspects the broad applications of this diffusion of technological innovations. The second half of the study surveys the endeavors which seek to apply the use of growth functions to the broadest possible areas of social change via the long waves of economic development and logistic substitution processes.

/pdf/growth-functions-social-diffusion-and-social-change-36m36vzjwe.pdf

Growth functions, social diffusion, and social change

Evergreens, sensations and the rest: A quantitative analysis of dynamics of news articles on domestic politics

The logistical function has been known and used by scientist more than hundred years for mathematical description of progresses. Different diffusion processes, such as the spread of contagious diseases or innovations show logistical growth as well. On basis of these, we targeted to reveal the signs of logistical growth on some specific area of the daily newspapers. For this purpose first we have chosen the recently most spectacular and well-defined public discussions in Hungary. We examined how the press reacted to the announcement made at Christmas in 2003 in the radio channel called “Radio Tilos”, where one of participant declared that he “would liquidate all Christians”. The evolution in time of the number of articles published reminds us strongly of to typical S curve of the logistic growth. It turned out that publishing occurred in several waves, mainly in three well-differentiated categories. We try to apply the logistic function on these categories. By using the logistic fit we could measure the st...

Nikosz Fokasz

Papers

Making Waves. Dissemination Processes in the Media