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Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the connections in cyberspace relate in any way to borders as understood in geographical terms. This goal requires testing Tobler's First Law of Geography. Analyses of hyperlinks come under the domain of webometrics, which seeks to answer the fundamental question: Is it possible to measure the Web? This study identified all websites which have hyperlinked to the websites of local authorities in the region of Lower Silesia. These websites were classified by the geographical location of the entity determining their content and thematic category. On the whole, it can be said that connections in cyberspace largely reflect actual functional borders. However, the main functional node dominating cyberspace is a country's capital.
Notes
1 The disadvantages and advantages of the presented methods of researching, performing quantitative analyses on and visualizing hyperlinks are described by Wilkinson et al. (Citation2003).
2 There have been attempts to devise special programmes to facilitate automatic searches for the physical, geographical of a particular website (Buyukokkten et al., Citation1999; Silva et al., Citation2006).
3 These categories are: local authority (local government at all levels); firm (private firms, municipal corporations and community partnerships); central institutions (ministries, central offices), association (non-governmental organizations, co-operatives); science and education (education at all levels, research and development units); sports and recreation (sport clubs, tourism and recreation in a broad sense); culture, art and entertainment (institutions, artists); offices (e.g. police, city guard and fire brigades, employment agencies, military); aid and medicine (e.g. aid institutions, hospices, hospitals, clinics); accommodations and catering (agritourism, hotels, restaurants); website (social networking services, thematic websites, blogs, forums, electronic versions of newspapers); website services and software; EU; religion; radio and television (RTV).
4 The NUTS2 level (regions) corresponds to administrative regions, or voivodships. Thus, in Poland, the term “regions” normally refers to provinces, of which there are 16.
5 In Poland there are 2479 communes and 380 counties, including 314 land counties and 66 cities with county status.