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Local government web sites in Finland: A geographic and webometric analysis

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Abstract

It has been shown that information collected from and about links between web pages and web sites can reflect real world phenomena and relationships between the organizations they represent. Yet, government linking has not been extensively studied from a webometric point of view. The aim of this study was to increase the knowledge of governmental interlinking and to shed some light on the possible real world phenomena it may indicate. We show that interlinking between local government bodies in Finland follows a strong geographic, or rather a geopolitical pattern and that governmental interlinking is mostly motivated by official cooperation that geographic adjacency has made possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Tavastgatan 13, 20500, Åbo, Finland

    Kim Holmberg

  2. School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Mike Thelwall

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  1. Kim Holmberg
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  2. Mike Thelwall
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Correspondence to Kim Holmberg.

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Holmberg, K., Thelwall, M. Local government web sites in Finland: A geographic and webometric analysis. Scientometrics 79, 157–169 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0410-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0410-6

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