DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2022.1.37344

Abstract: In the times of the data revolution, there is an urgent need to address numerous issues on how ongoing transformations of everyday life are influencing society and historians who study it. Thus, publications like “Information: A Historical Companion” are very important as they give our academic community a basis for a discussion on new possible theoretical and methodological backgrounds of historical research. However, while this book contains a range of diversified studies and deep reflections on information and the evolution of its sources, we wonder why among related notions like “data” and “knowledge” there was no place for such a core concept as the “information hierarchy”. Thus, we would like to raise a question on the role of the “DIKW-model” for history and to demonstrate how it could help to solve a common problem in the misuse of terminology. This opinion piece is a part of publications following the meeting dedicated to a discussion of the book “Information: A Historical Companion” organized by the “Historical Informatics” journal on October 26, 2021.

DOI: 10.7256/2409-8671.2016.3.19555

Abstract: The Soft power theory is popular among scholars and politicians, however, the nature of this phenomenon can complicate its evaluation, especially in the research, based on quantitative methods. At present, we are facing a trend of rising violence in the world, and soft power indexes, created by consulting agencies, are not enough. They are important indeed, partially because these reports remind us of the alternatives to coercion. But their authors often put emphasis on the states possessing significant political power resources. Probably, it leads to the misperception that countries, which din't have significant hard power resources, are unable to accumulate enough soft power to implement it as a foreign policy tool.The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that this assumption is not always correct. We use the linear regression model to show that Asian and African countries can use soft power in the United Nations even if their hard power is small. The research contains the information on the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations and 124 countries-submitters and co-submitters of resolution drafts in 2001-2015. As we fully admit that soft power indexes are difficult to create and apply, this paper also covers soft power limits and critique.