Communication and Globalization: A Longitudinal Analysis of the lntcrnational Telecommunication Nctwork[l]

This paper extends the theoretical arguments of the world-systems perspective to the emerging post-industrial society. Using survey data gathered by AT&T and pub lishcd in the World's Telephones (1978-1990) and data gathered by the lntcrnational Institute of Communication and published in TcleGcography (1991-1992), this pap er describes the process of globalization by examining the changes in the international telecommunications network from 1978 to 1992. Ba<;cd on network analysis, the result<; indicate that the system wa<; relativ ely stable over this time period. 1n the late 1970s, the system wa<; composed of a number of sub-groups. By 1980, it had coalesced into a sin glc group with the United States and the other western economic powers at the center and the Ea<;tcrn block and less developed countries in the periphery. Over time, the network slowly became denser, more centrali zed and more highly integrated. During the 1980s , the newly industrialized countries (NICs) of Ea<;t A'lia and the wealthi er Latin Am erican countries moved from the periphery of the network toward the center. Beginnin g in 1989, the former members of the Soviet block also moved from the periphery toward the cent er of the system, supplanting the wealthier countries from Latin America. Th e Asian NICs, however, retained their scmipcriph cral position. [Page l] Journal of World-Systems Research

the world (Dizard, 1989).In fact, information technologies now provide the basic infrastructure for an interdependent world, leading theorist.:;to characterize the world as a "global village" (McLuhan, 1966).
The ongoing information revolution involving data storage, processing, transmitting and retrieval obviously affects all aspects of social, political and economic life.There arc two major characteristics of the information age or post-industrial society: the information economy and transbordcr communication.While industrial society was based on th e production of goods, the information society is built on the creation and distribution of information.The emergence of the information economy has led the expansion of the service sector as compared to the manufacturing sector.Statistics about the information economy arc striking.According to Bell (1973), a total of 39.5% of the workers were in the service sectors ( e.g., transport, trade, insurance, banking, public administration, personal service) in the 1960s.The proportion had increased to 47.6% by 1973. Porat (1977) ) also described the emergence of the information economy noting that by the 1970s,

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Journa I of World-Systems Research near half of the U.S. work force can be classified as information workcrs.
[2] This trend ha-; continued.Frederick (1993) observed that worldwide telecommunication servic es during 1980s grew about 800%.[3]UNESCO reported, "that the total world information and communication economy in 1986 wa.:; $1,185 billion, about 8 to 9% of total world output, of which $515 billion wa.:; in the United States" (p.58).Information ha-; saturat ed every a.:;pcct of human life including international political, economic and social relations.In other words , information is the resource of power for countri es' int eraction with each other on the global stage.Globalization, the other major characteristic of the information age, is the proc ess of strengthening the worldwid e social relations which link distant localiti es in such a way that local events arc shaped by circumstances at other places in the world (Giddens, 1990).Thus, what happ ens in a local neighborhood is likely to be influ enced by factors operating at an indefini te distance away from that neighborhood it.:;clf.The incr ca.:; c in trans border communication ha-; led to the rapid global diffusion of values, idea-;, opinions, and technologies.Transbordcr communication ha-; changed our conc epts of tim e and space (Giddens, 1990).Technologies hav e eliminat ed national b oundarics and geographic separation and created a global community (Cherry, 1977;Pool, 1990;Frederick, 1993).
Wallcrst cin (1974) ha-; argued that this proc ess ha-; been occurring in the economic sphere since about 1500.Other world-systems theorists (sec below) contend that the process of extending economic linkages to more distant geographical settings can be traced back at least to antiquity and even to the paleolithic era.Giddens (1990) argues that globalization is an inherent part of modernization.One consequence of modernization is the incrca<;c in time-space compression which makes physical distance incrca<;ingly less important in social relations.Globali zation stretches the boundaries of social interaction such that the connections between different social contexts or nations become networked [Page 3] Journal of World-Systems Research across the earth a<; a whole.Indeed, a<; Barnett and Choi (1995) found in their analysis of the international telecommunication network, physical location accounts for only a relatively small percentage of the structure of this network, while cultural factors, such a<; language, account for a much larger percentage.
Along with the advancement of information technologies, the world can be divided into the information-rich and the information-poor countries.The global econom y may be characterized by an unequal exchang e between powerful information-rich and information-poor countries (Barnett, Choi, Jacobson & Sun, 1993).This gap betw een the "haves " and the "have-nots" in the global interaction is widening.In fact, a country's interact ion patterns arc a<;sociatcd with its levels of economic and political development (Sun & Barnett, 1994).These relations may be understood in the context of worldsystcms theory (Wallcrstcin, 1976;Chirot & Hall, 1982;Chase-Dunn, 1989;Knoke & Burm eister-Ma y, 1990;Cha<;c-Dunn & Grimes, 1995).
World-systems theory seeks to analyze long-term social changes by combining the study of societal level processes with the study of intcrsocictal relations.It challenges the a<;sumption that nations arc independ ent and that their development can be understood without taking into account the systematic ways in which societies arc link ed to one another in the context of a larg er network of material and capital exchanges ( Cha<;c -Dunn, 1989).
World-systems theory focuses on the unequal distribution of power and goods in the capitalist world-system.It argues that an identifiable social system exists beyond the boundari es of nations and states.This social system is the global economic system.All countries arc interrelated and linked in the world capitalist system and any change in an individual country is a result of events in the world-system.Economic rela tionships within the world-system arc politically enforced and, a<; such, arc rel atively stable.This inte gration is a result of the interdependence and dynamic interaction among nation-states of uneven power (Cha<;c-Dunn, 1992).

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World-systems theory describes the global structure in terms of three types of structurally equivalent components: the core, the periphery, and the semiperiphery.In modern history, economic relationships exist among these components.Peripheral societies specialize in the production and expo rt of labor-intensive, low-wage, low-technology goods desired by the core and the scmipcriphcry.In return, the core produces capitalintcnsive, high-wage, high-technology goods in order to export to the periphery and scmiperiphery.The scmipcriphery engages in both core-like activity (the exploiter), and peripheral-like activities (the exploited) in the world-system (Shannon, 1989).While there is some dispute regarding the cla..,sification of specific nations a.., core, scmiperipheral and peripheral (Smith & White, 1992), a country's membership in one of these categories tends to be stable.Core countries stay at the center of the world's economic system and the peripheral states remain peripheral.What little change there is involves the semipcriphcral societies, a.., they move toward the center or periphery depending on global social, political and economic factors.
The implications of world-systems theory arc: 1.The structural position of a country determines its potential for development and its interaction patterns; 2. The structural position of a country is a result of its int eractions with other countries; 3.There arc two kinds of scmipcriphery nations: a) core-like nations which are developing core-like dominance in the world-systems; and b) periphery -like nations which arc losing major dominance in the world-systems; 4. The relationships among the nations in the network are relatively stable, changing only a.., the distribution of the modes of production change.

Journal of World-Systems Research
Traditionally, world-systems theory ha.., ignored the exchange of information among the world's nations .Only recently ha.., it been discussed in these terms (Barnett, ct al., 1993;Cha..,c-Dunn & Hall, 1994).This paper extends the theoretical arguments of the worldsystcms perspective to the emerging post-industrial society.
Clearly, the transition into an information ba..,cd economy could serve a.., a catalyst to reorgani ze the world-sys tem provided that this transition involves changes in the modes of production and their patterns of ownership.These changes could incrca ., 1992;Bollen, 1983) arc quit e similar for the emerging information age (Barnett, ct al., 1993).Ownership of the information technologies is by the core, primarily the United States, Western Europe and Japan.Thus, world-systems theory would argue for stability in the international telecommunication network.
Galtung (1971) also describes international relations in structural terms.He proposes four rules for defining the structure of international interaction (communication): 1) international communication is vertical between center and peripheral nations; 2) interaction between peripheral nations is missing; 3) multilateral int eraction involving all three is missing; 4) interaction with the outside world is monopolized by the center.In other words, "there is interaction along the spokes, from the periphery to the center hub; but not along the rim, from one periphery nation to another (Galtung, 1971, p. 97)." Pa<;t research ha<; characterized the international telecommunications sys tern a<; a single interconnected group (Barnett, ct al., 1993) Knoke & Burmeist er-Ma y, 1990), the more connected and central a count ry is in the network the greater its Gross National Product per capita.Barnett, ct al. (1993) report correlations a<; high a<; .56betwe en a country's conncctcdn css and centrality in the network and its GNP per capita .
Furth er, Sun and Barnett (1994) report that a country's position in the international telecommunication network is also an exce llent predictor of its level of democrati zation.
Correlat ions ranged from .27 to .55 betwee n connectedness, centrality and integration and politi cal participa tion.Cho i ( 1993) found a high degree of correspondence between the telecommunications network and the struc ture of int ernational trade, mail flows and air traffic .Barnett and Choi (1995) indicat e that the language spoken by the inhabitants of th e individu al countries and its physical location accurately predict a nation's position in the internati onal telecommunications network.Together, these two antecedent conditions account for over 36% of the variance in the network's structure.Consistent with Galtung's (l 97l) structural theory of imperialism, they describe the network a.:; being like a star or having a radial structure with the United States near the origin or center of the network.Near the center is the hub.It is composed of most Western European nations.Emanating from the hub arc three spokes composed of regional neighbors; one for Latin America, a second for Ea.:;tcrn Europe and, a third for the Pacific, A.:;ia and the Middle Ea.:;t.A nation's distance from the hub (center) is indicative of how periph eral they are such that the scmipcriphcral nations arc closer to the hub.

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The research reported in this paper addresses three questions: • What is the structure of the world-system based upon international information flows?• How ha.:; this structure changed over time, simultaneously with the emergence of the information age?• How have the positions of the semipcriphcral countri es changed during this same period?
Specifically, this paper describes the changes in the international telephone network between 1978 and 1992.Given current trends in the information society such a.:; globalization, it would be expected that over this period of time the system would become denser, more tightly connected and more highly inte grated.Howe ver, worldsystcms theory would predict that the relations among the nations in the int ernational communication network would remain relatively stable over this short period of time in spite of changes in the transition into an information ba.:;cd economy.Indeed, what little change that might have occurred would be among the relations of those countries characterized a.:; semipcriphcral (Cha.:;e-Dunn& Hall, 1994).During the 1980s, the scmipcriphcrals were the newly industrial countries (NICs) of A.:;ia including, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong , and the more highly develope d nations of Latin America including, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina .Additionally, th e former socialist countries of Ea.:;tcrn Europ e (i.e., Ea.:;t Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Russia) may be cla.:;sificda.:; scmipcriph eral because they are at the periphery of the capitalist world-system, in spite of their relatively high level of economic development (Knoke, & Burmeister-May, 1990;Bergesen, 1992).The changes in the relative network positions of these three sets of semipcriphcrals will be describ ed.

METHODS
The changes in the structure of the international telecommunications may be examin ed through network analysis.Network analysis is a set of research procedures for identifying structures in social systems ba.:;c d

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Journal of World-Systems Research on the relations among the system's components (Rogers & Kincaid, 1981;Richards & Barnett, 1993).The method may be generalized to describe the patt erns of communication among different social systems or nation-states.In this paper, we are concerned with the changing relations among societies from the late 1970s until the early 1990s.The specific relation of concern is the :frequency of communication among nations mediated through telecommunications; for purposes of this research, the telephone, although these procedures may be extended to other forms of tclecommunicatio n (Barnett & Rice, 1985;Danowski & Edison-Swift, 1985).Network analysis ha-. in the pa-.t been used to investigate the implications of world-systems theory (Snyder & Kick, 1979;Bollen, 1983;Smith & White, 1992;Barnett, ct al., 1993).
The ba-.ic network data set is an n x n matrix S, where n equals the number of nodes in the analysis.A node is the unit of analysis.It may be an individual or higher level component, such as an organization or a nation.Each cell, sij, indicates the strength of the relationship among nodes i and j.In communication research, this relationship is generally the :frequency of communication among the nodes.The frequency may be restricted to a particular topic, communication channel (the telephon e) or languag e.For example, sij could be the :frequency of communication over the telephone between i and j in German or French.S is symmetrical (sij = sji) when one is not concerned with direction.In those instances when the source and receiver of the information are differentiated, S is asymmetrical (sij ne sji).In this case, non-directional communication among nations using the telephone is examined.
International Telephone.This paper analyzes the changes in the international telecommunications network using 14 points in time, 1978 to 1992.The netwo rk is described annually with the exception of 1984.The data were gathered from two sources.The data from 1978 to 1990 were collected as part of a self-report survey by AT&T and published in The World's Telephones (AT&T, 1990).The 1991 and 1992 data were collected by the International Institute of Communications and were published in TelcGeography (Staple, 1992).
AT&T a-;ked representatives of countries to report the most frequentl y called countries and the number of messages sent.Since not all respondents reported the numb er of messages, the analysis of the network is ba.:;cdonly upon the most frequently called countries.The data were reported in rank order of the number of messages and were treated in this way in the analysis.The ten most frequently called countri es were report ed.The link-, were coded 10 for the most frequently called country, 9 for the second most, 8 for the third, and so on.
In the 1978 data only the three most frequent countries were reported.The United Kingdom did not report its frequencies of international telephone call.:; in the AT&T data sets.However, since the reported data were directional, it wa-; added a-; a node based on its rank a-; a receiver of telephone messages.The final sample sizes for each data set arc reported in Table 2.
The 1991 and 1992 data were compiled by the International Institute of Communications (IIC) from an independent survey of telecommunications service providers (Staple, 1992).In some ca-;cs, traffic data were estimated ba.:;cd upon annual report s, government publications and industry interviews.They also consulted the following publications: Yearbook of Statistics (ITU, Geneva, 1991 ); International Fcrnsprcchstatistik (Siemens, Munich, 1992); The World's Telephones January 1990, (AT&T, Indianapolis, IN, 1992); and The World's Telephones January 1989 (AT&T, Indianap olis, IN, 1990) .

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These data arc reported in MiTT--Minutcs of Telecommunication Traffic.MiTT refers to paid minutes of public voice circuit traffic including operator a-;sistcd calls.Depending upon national conditions, MiTT may include voice and non-voice (facsimile, slow speed data) traffic (Staple & Mullins, 1989).
Only 41 countries arc included in TclcGeography 1992 (1991 data), including all European Common Market members.Missing arc most lesser developed nations and former members of the Ea-;tcrn Block.For example, South Africa is the only sampl e member from that continent and Hungary is the only representative from Eastern Europ e.
The number of link-; reported ranged from 8 to 20 with an average of 14.
In 1992, the sample was expanded to 51.Other form er Ea-;tern Block countries (Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia) were added a-; were lesser develop ed countries from South America (Pern and Columbia) and South Asia (Sri Lank.a,Bangladesh and Thailand).The number oflinks ranged from 10 to 25 with an average of 15.
In spite of the problems of variable number oflinks and sample size, research indicates that the data arc reliable (Barnett, ct al., 1993).Network.indicators (connectedness, centrality and integration) among 1982, 1986 and 1989 for 53 countries who reported their international calls for all three points in time correlated between .77and .99.

Journa I of World-Systems Research
relations among the nodes including connectedness, centrality and integration, as well as, overall network.characteristics, such a-; system density.The program wa-; run with default parameters without specifying directionality.For 1991 and 1992, two MiTTs were required a-; the minimum link strength.
Centrality is the mean number oflinks required to reach all other nodes in a group, such that the lower the mean the more central the node.The use of NEGOPY's continuous mca-;urc of centrality is consistent with recent advocates of world-systems theory (Smith & White, 1992).Cha-,c-Dunn (1989, p. 207) a-;scrts that, "the core /periphery dimension is a continuous variable".This is somewhat at odds with Wallcrstcin's (1974) original formulation of discrete boundaries between the core, scmipcriphery and periphery countries.This implies there arc discontinuities in the world hierarchy, thus suggesting a discontinuous mca-;urc of centrality.
NEGOPY's mca-;urc of centrality docs not consider the strength oflinks (frequency of communication) among nodes.It accounts only for the number of links required to reach each of the other nodes in the network.An alternative is Bonacich's (1972) mca-;urc of centrality.It considers the strength of the relationships among the nodes by taking the eigenvector of the largest eigenvalue of matrix S, standardized so that its length is equal to the eigenvalue.The loadings on this vector indicate a node's centrality.The algorithm from UCINET IV (Borgatti, Everett & Freeman, 1992) was employed to determin e the countries' centrality for 1992.
Conn ectedness is simply defined a-; a node's number of links.Integration is the proportion of a focal node's links that arc connected to one another.Density is th e actual number oflinks divided by the number of possible links [n(n-l )/2] (for non-dir ectional data).Each of these measures indicates the state of the system (level of globalization) at a single point in time.

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To describe how the network is changing over time, the node level indicators can be averaged and then longitudinal patterns observed.These trend.., may be verified through regression analysis (indicator over time).Similar procedures were used by Danowski and Edison-Swift (l 985) to examine changes in an organization's telecommunication network in response to a crisis.Due to the process of globalization, it is expected that the system should become denser and more highly integrated over time.That is, the social relations (links) within the worldwide telecommunications network should become strengthened over time.

Description ofNctwork
Table l presents the connectedness, centrality and integrati on for the individua l countries for one point in time --1992.The results arc similar to those reported by Barnett, ct al. (1993) and Sun and Barnett (1994) except that there arc only 51 nodes .Missing from the data arc large numbers oflcsscr developed countries.However, because there arc fewer nodes the overall structur e is ca.., icr to discern.
[Page l3] Jou rnal of World-Systems Research The results from NEGOPY indicate that the network is compose of a single group with the United States and the western economic powcrs --Unitcd Kingdom, German y, Franc e, Italy and Canada at the center, and the LDC's (Uruguay, Peru, Co lumbi a, Saudi Arab ia, and Chile) at the periph ery (Sec Table 1 ).Japan is the lea..,t central of th e core countri es, perhaps due to its location in Ea..,t Asia.Sri Lanka and Ban gladesh arc not group members.They may be cla-.sificda-.attached isolates with links only to the Unit ed Kingdom.The system is relatively dense (.352), with about one in three possible connections present.

Journa I of World-Systems Research
Bonacich's mca-.urc of centrality is also presented in Table 1.Worth noting arc the differences between the two centrality measures.NEGOPY's results arc Eurocentric in the sense that it places the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Switz erland, the Netherlands and Spain at the center directly after the United States.Bonacich's mca-.urc is centered more about the United States.Due to Canada's and Mexico's great frequency of interaction with the United States, they arc ranked a-. the second and third most central countries in the system followed by the core European countries.Japan is more central by the Bonacich mca-.urc,moving from the thirteenth to eighth most central, supplanting Switzerland, the Netherland-.and Spain.The other European nations arc mor e peripheral, while the Latin American countries arc somewhat more central.
Figure 1 presents the two-dimensional result-. of a multidim ensional scaling of matrix S (the frequency of communication--1992) obtained from the non-cuclidian metric MDS algorithm from UCINET IV (Borgatti, ct al., 1992).These two dimen sions account for 70.1% of the variance in the network.At the center of the figure arc the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France.Around the periphery arc Uruguay, Ireland, South Africa, Hungary, Turkey, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Columbia, Iceland, Sri Lanka and Banglad esh.Th ese countri es arc relatively less economically developed than the countries at the center of the network and thus arc consistent with world-systems theory.Worth noting is Japan's location among the peripheral Asian countri es.

Journa I of World-Systems Research
Longitudinal Result.., Overall, the network remain ed relatively stable over the period of investigation .In 1978, the network was composed of six groups with extensive connections among them.The six groups were: 1) Southwestern Pacific Islands and Australia; 2) Caribbean; 3) W cstcrn Hemisphere and the Netherlands, United Kingdom, English-sp eaking Africa, the Middle and India; 4) Scandinavia; 5) Europe, French-speaking Africa and Pacific Islands; and 6) Ea..,t A..,ia.Also, the network includ ed 18 countries which NEGOPY identified a.., liaisons.There were 156 link.., ( 45% of a total of 344) among the six groups.
A year later in 1979, the network coalesced into two interconn ected groups, one wit h 120 countries and including most of the world (groups 1 through 5 from 1978) and another made up of 14 East and South A..,ian countries (group 6).Again, there were extensive tics (33 link...) among the two groups, mainly through core countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Canada).Since 1980, however, the network ha.., consisted of a single group.
Table 2 and Figure 2 present the density, and the average centrality and integration for each of the 14 points in time --1978 to 1992.While these indicat ors show that the network is changing, the rate of change is rel atively slow.proportion ofa node's linb that are intero.,nnectedhas increased from .555 in 19 7 8 to .7 65 between 1980 and 1991, a chunge ofl 9. 7 ~'Q.In 1992. it declined to . 752.Anmtall:y, the average chunge is only 1 .1 ~•Q.A linear regression of average integration overtime ,va, significant (r-,quared = .M,; f = 23. 73, p < .001J Throughout the 1980,.the core, semiperiphery andperipheryw-ere cornpo,edofthe saine member,.At the center were the English-speaking countries, Vnited States, the Vnited King.lorn and Canu..la, the wealthier Western Europeun CO(ll]tries, Gennany, fmno.c,Italy, Switzerland, Spain and the \:ctherlan,t,.At the peripheryw-ere the thin.I world cmmtrie, in the Pacific.Africa.Asia and Latin America, a, well a,, fonner Eastern-block co,mtries.Bctw-een the these tw<J categories w-ere the semiperipheral countries. [Page 18] Jounw I of "ftfxld-System, Resmrch Overtime, there w-as some mo,-cmcnt among the scmipcriphcral c,mntrics.To examine the changes in ccntr!llityofthcsc countries, the percentiles of their rnnks on centrality ( ooconling to NEGOPY) were dctcnnincd arrmutlly between l 980 und l 992.They were not dctc1mincd for 1978 and 1979 bccim~c the network was comp_,scd of more thim one gm-up.Next.three grnup mean percentiles were calculated, one for the newly imb:L~trhtl conntics (NIC~) of A~ia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), imothcr for wealthier cocmtrics of Latin America (Mexico, V cnczncla, Brazil and Argentina), and a thinl for the fonncrmcmbcn; of the Soviet block (East Gcnnany, Poland, Hcmgmy, Czechoslovakia and RcL~sia [USSR]).
It was necessary to examine the centrality of a gt\>Clfl of nations rather than those of imlivil4~1l conntrics for two reasons.Fin;t, the classification of specific countries as scmipcriphcral is open to debate.Second, dam were not available for all inllivil4utl conntrics at each point in time.For example, there arc no data for East Gcnnany after 1989 when it ceased to exist.As a resctlt.the imlivil4utl ccntralityrankings arc somewhat cmstablc and the tracking of single cocmtrics difficult.By ag,,;-rcgating among cocmtrics the overall patterns of change become easier to observe.The chimgcs in the ccntntlity for these three gt\>ClflS arc presented in Figure J.
Over time, the newly indJ:tstriaI conntrics of Asia became more central.In l 980, their average percentile was .568.During the milkllc of the llcCad.c it had d1oppcd to between .455 and .:\75.By the end of the dcc8llc, it was about .20.The o,-crall trend inllicatcs movement from the periphery of the network toward the center (r-squarcd = .47,a= .5:\2,b = -.02(i,F = 6.21, p < .05).

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The Ea..,tern European countries also became more central during this period.Howe ver, their change occurred at a later point in time.During most of the decade, they were at th e periphery of the network.Between 1980 and 1989 their average percentile ranged between .973 and .828.1989 marked the breakup of the Soviet Union.Aft er this date, there wa.., rapid movement toward the center of the network a.., these countries became integrated into the world capitalist economy.In 1990, the perc entile centralit y dropped to .452, and by 1992, it had reached .382.The overall trend indicates movem ent from the periphery of the network toward the center (r-squarcd = .50,a= 1.08, b = -.038,F = 8.99, p < .05).
The pattern for the Latin American scmipcriphcrals is more interesting.In the early 1980s, these countries were relatively peripheral.Their percentile centrality wa.., .50 in 198050 in and 198150 in . It dropped to a range between .36 and .25 between 198250 in and 1988, reaching its most central level, .2, in 1989.After this date, the Latin American countries moved toward the periphery.In 1991 and 1992, their percentile centralities were .73 and .74,respectively.An examination of Figure 3 suggests that these countries' positions in the world's communication system wa.., supplanted by the new democracies ofEa..,tcrn Europe.The breakup of the Soviet Union seems to have provided the impetus to reposition the former Ea..,tcrn Block toward the center of the netwo rk a.., they formed direct links to the core countries in W cstcrn Europe.At the same time the Latin American countries were forced to the periphery a.., the Ea..,tcrn European countries took over their location in the network.

DISCUSSION
This paper raised three research questions.The discussion of the results of the data anal ysis will be organized to answer these questions.The first question a..,k cd, "What is the structure of the world-syst em ba..,cd upon international information flows?"As demonstrated by the 1992 data, the structure of the international telecommunications network is consistent with world-systems theory.The result.., indicate that the network is composed of a single group with the United States and the other W cstcrn economic powers at the center and the lesser develope d countries at the periph ery .A nation's centrality in the network is significan tly correlated with its GDP per capita.

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These findings arc similar to Smith and Whit e (1992) who examined commodity trade flows and also found a singl e core/periphery dimension.At the center were United States, Western Europe and Japan.At the periphery were the lesser developed countries in Latin America and Africa and between these two groups were nations generally clas sified as scmipcriphcral.The correlation of a country's position on the core/periphery dimension with it~ GNP per capita ranged from .76 to .81 depending on the year.
The second question wa~, "How ha~ this structure changed over time , simultaneously with the emergence of the information age?" A~ predicted by world-systems theory, the international telecommunication network was relatively stable over the period 1978-1992.The core, semipcriphcry and periphery were composed of the same countries, although there wa~ some movement among the scmipcripherals.Smith and White (1992) also report a high level of structural stability among the core, scmipcriphcry andpcriphcry for commodities between 1965 and 1980, in spite of the l 973 oil shock, the rise of the new international division of labor and the emerg ence of a number of newly industrial countries.The changes that did occur included the expansion of the core and extensive movement among the scmipcriphcry .
A~ suggested by Cha~c-Dunn and Hall (1994), technological changes in communication have facilitated the incorporation of small-scale systems into a single global network.This occurred prior to 1980.Further, a~ the world moved into the information age, the network slowly became denser, more centraliz ed and more highly integrated.1n other words, globalization wa~ taking place.
The international telecommunication network became more centralized throughout this period.This indicates that an increasing amount of information [Page 21] Journal of World-Systems Research is flowing through the core countries rather than being exchanged directly among mor e peripheral nations.This is consistent with Galtung's (1971) structural theory of imperialism.It suggest~ that the core nations arc maintainin g and perhaps enhancing their positions of economic power a~ the modes of production change from industrial to informational.
Whil e these findings arc intriguing, data quality problem~ prevent us from making precise predictions about the future of the network (Rictveld & Janssen, 1990).As a result, only general trends in the data were identified.The poor quality of the data prevented a more sophisticated analysis of the changes in the network over time .This analysis wa~ conducted primarily with the rank orders of contacts for a limited number of nodes.Furthermore, a somewhat different set of countries made up the data set at each point in time .Thus, little can be said about the changes in network position of specific countries.They can only be described by the grossest of patterns.
The number increa-;ed to five for 1979.For 1980 to 1983 only the seven most frequent countries were reported.Between 1985 and 1990 the ten most frequently called countries wer e reported.A somewhat different set of countries responded to the survey each year.The sample sizes ranged from 85 in 1985 to 137 in 1979.Eliminated from the analysis were Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, The Channel Islands and the various South African homelands.
; Rice & Richards, 1985; Richards & Rice, 1981) was used to analyze the telephone network.at each point in time.NEGOPY is a computer program for communication network analysis (Rogers & Kincaid, 1981) which examines the cohesion among the nodes.It provides communication role indicators (e.g., group member, isolate, attached isolate, liaison or tree node [41) for each node and continuous measures of the [Page 11]