Abstract
In analysing and modelling the Tuscany regional system of innovation poles (www.poliinnovazione.unimore.it), we examine systematically available information on websites with two objectives: (i) to analyze the variety of language and content that characterize the poles in their online activities; (ii) examine the extent poles refer to the same institutions, enterprises, organizations, projects, and among these, organizations / or activities directly related to the (such as the companies managing the poles laboratories, incubators, the adherents ). This paper offers a linguistic analysis of the websites produced by innovation poles in Tuscany, in order to provide a set of variables for the evaluation of their promotion strategies. The focus of the analysis is the evaluation of original vs. reported information, which is here used as indicator of the innovation poles' engagement in the promotion of their activities. The purpose is to quantify the level of engagement that each single network has built – on its website – through the publication of texts. Through Corpus Linguistics methodology, and using both a quantitative and a qualitative approach (similar to the one proposed by the CADS framework), this papers looks at how the innovation poles taken into account have used a set of 24 terms related to the notions of innovation and promotion (business, businesses, centers, collaboration, knowledge, finance, management, manager, business, business, industrial, innovation, pole, poles, processes, projects, design, research, service, services, development, technology , technologies, territory). By looking at whether these terms appear in original or reported (produced by third-parties) texts, and at how their meanings and connotations are constructed in the former cases, this paper identifies how active have the innovation poles been in promoting their work. In addition to linguistic analysis, text analysis of web pages also allowed to identify main domains (urls) and complete links mentioned on the websites of poles. Adopting a perspective of social network analysis, with information on these virtual networks we analysed two issues relevant to modelling the system of innovation poles: through the quotes of major domains, we highlight the extent to which the web sites have reported the poles connections with each other and with those involved in technology transfer; through the analysis of complete links present on the websites of individual poles we can identify to what extent the poles refer to the same information space. The presentation is structured as follows: section 1 presents the data, tools and methodology used in linguistic analysis; section 2 presents linguistic analysis of the 24 selected terms; in section 3 virtual networks are analysed; section 4 concludes. Appendix 1 presents the technical details on the collection and subsequent data cleansing; Appendix 2 contains the list of the top link complete inside of the poles of the sites surveyed.
Key words: linguistic analysis; web communication; innovation poles; regional innovation policies; network analysis
JEL codes: R10 General Regional Economics; O25 Industrial Policy; Y8 Related Disciplines; C88 Other Computer Software