We report on the experience of creating a socially networked system, the Research-oriented Social Environment (RoSE), for representing knowledge in the form of relationships between people, documents, and groups. Developed as an intercampus, interdisciplinary project of the University of California, this work reflects on a collaboration between scholars in the humanities, software engineering, and information studies by providing an opportunity not only to synthesize different disciplinary perspectives, but also to interrogate and challenge the assumptions each brings to team-based design projects in the digital humanities. This work examines socially networked knowledge as both content and methodology for collaboration, calling for further critique and future investigation of epistemological questions in models of social networks.

The Eurasian Economic Union has been formed by a rapid, retrospective, and at the same time, constant transfer to a qualitatively novel phase of a combination of the post-Soviet space. It is found in the desire to consolidate the potential of regional economies that are structurally different from each other, through the unification or convergence of regulatory principles, the minimization or complete elimination of internal administrative obstacles to do business, and in general, the progress of supranational collaboration. The major goal -achieving synergy -is to balance different high-speed trajectories, stimulate the economic growth of sovereign member countries of the Union, as well as increase their economies competitiveness. This is a unique model of combination that considers the trends towards exemption from comprehensive global norms and long-range conventions that are characteristic of many large economies and major global development trends today. Within the framework of this article, issues of cooperation in transport, logistics, and project areas are considered. The author considers the potential of the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as the interests of its participants in interaction to ensure a stable foreign economic strategy. Special attention is drawn to the need to intensify actions and involve government bodies as well as representatives of the trade sector, and Eurasian development institutions.

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This article examines the theme of social networks in Mark Z. Danielewski’s serial novel The Familiar, as well as the social networks involved in the work’s reception, as a means of assessing the contemporary novel’s imbrication in social networks and social media. It contributes to critical discussions about The Familiar—and to broader conversations about the novel in the social media age—on two fronts. First, it analyzes Danielewski’s diegetic social networks. I argue that, in The Familiar, the planetary social is largely represented as a source of anxiety, as the existential threat of violence is amplified and perpetuated through social media. Yet the novel also explores how social networks offer the potential for resistance and protection from such violence. Second, the article describes how Danielewski’s real-world socially networked communities have impacted the interpretation of his writing. The analysis centers on the Facebook “Reading Club” dedicated to The Familiar and on the online discussion, conducted through WordPress, wherein students and faculty at multiple universities blogged about The Familiar, Volume 1. The WordPress discussion pushes the classroom into the blogosphere, troubling distinctions among academic interpretation, social networking, and public discourse. The Facebook group harnesses the conventions of both social media and book clubs, demonstrating how academic-adjacent interpretation may flourish in contexts not typified by such reading. At stake is a more nuanced understanding of the power and potential violence of communities constituted through social media; of the novel’s ability to represent and theorize such communities; and of the ways that reading communities’ emergence across social media has problematized longstanding conceptualizations of contemporary reading culture as characterized by a series of divisions (such as that between amateur and professional readers).

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