Abstract

The spatial pattern and intrinsic mechanisms of information flow among the 31 provinces, cities and autonomous regions are analyzed in this dissertation. As the assurance to realize the information's value, information flow has been the most important character of the society. The research of information economy is from two aspects: informatics（mostly of macro-information-economy）and economy（mostly of micro-information-economy）. This article is based on the research of information resource's spatial configuration. Firstly, the study described the conception and characters of information and information flow, and then summarized the disciplines of information flow. Based on the idea of contacts among areas causing information's flow, the hypothesis of “information's flow is prone to convergence in size, direction and arrangement”is advanced. By building several models, the article verified the hypothesis and the spatial pattern of information flow is uncovered profoundly.

Chapter 1 analyzs the necessity and significance of this study, showed the content and basic methodology, and pointed out potential contribution and deficiency. Our country entered the information society, information flow is important increasingly. Most of existing literatures about elements flow mostly focused on such aspects as the spatial pattern of objects、human and money's flow and the aspects to economy. The difficulty of dates'obtain has been the obstacle of information flow's research. To resolve the problem, the article tried to build a common model to analyze the reason of imbalance of informationization among areas from the aspects of information flow empirically.

Chapter 2 sums up the basic theories and the most representative claims of the spatial pattern of information flow. Just because of the disagreement of the concept of information, the study of information flow has been grown slowly, so this chapter packs up the concepts of information, information flow and their quantity, then give the understand of information flow in this article. The research is based on the basic hypothesis that information's flow is rooting from the contacts of areas, and we all know information's flow come into being interpersonal network, so we choose space interaction theory and social network theory as the basic theory. By the tidying up the documents of information flow, we find that most of the researches are based on the static and isolated idea, and almost focus on one carrier of information. But we think that the research of information flow should be based on the dynamic and holistic idea.

Chapter 3 is the existing condition analysis of information flow, and then gives the research framework of the dissertation. The exising condition analysis consists of the polarization of information inventory and the delamination of information need. We find that information inventory condition has come into being three development centers: Beijing and Tianjin region, Shanghai Jiangsu and Zhejiang region and Guangdong province, and each region are good at information index, information technology and network built inspectively. The modern carriers of information are more concentrative than traditional ones. In the discussion of information need, we find that people with difficult background of society, profession and learning have difficult information need. The need of network information is layered too. Combining with the analysis of the air transportation's passenger flow among the big cities, we advance the hypothesis:our country's information flow has come into being the several centers and networked pattern.

Chapter 4 analyzes the neighbourhood effect of information flow from several aspects of the connection of informations with paracticality flow, the sociality and the range attenuation of information flow. So the interrelation of informatization development among areas decides the direction of information flow. Using the space autocorrelation indexs, we can find that the overall space autocorrelation index of information growth among areas is positivily significant, which reveals the flow of information is not randomness but being rely on each other. The local space autocorrelation index reveals the influence among the information development of areas. And we name the difficult flow condition with “polarization center”, “diffusion center”, “local diffusion”and“downfold”. We find our country has come into being three centers and near each can find“downfold”.

Chapter 5 gives the scale of information flow among the areas. Information's folw is originated from the intercorrelation of the areas, so we build the model based on the gravitation model and modifies it combining with the feature of information. We find that our country's information flow has formed the multicenter network pattern. The convergency centers of information flow of several layers are the nodes and the information flow among the convergency centers and their hinterlands are the links of the network. Specifically, the three centers are very active in information flow but difficult in direction. Beijing and Tianjin are output center and the other centers are input centers. The provinces in middle part are not active in information flow, and we can say they form a loose network which is inefficient in distribution of information resources but competent in absorbing new ideas. In a contrary, provinces in the west build a dense network, but lack communition with other areas. So depending on the belief inner the network, increasing the touch with other areas is the way of them to improve.

Chapter 6 reveales the mechanism of pattern of information flow. Firstly, the resources and the destinations of information flow cause the flow's increasing returns to scale from cognitive structure and economic structure's increasing in quantity and quality. The obstacle carrier of information, social relations factors, time effect and absorbency all can cause the attenuation of information in quantity and quality. Secondly, any area is in the social networks, and strong connections help the flow of information which are not decodable based on the strong wish of flow, high efficiency and the same background, but the information redundancy is a problem; weak connections help the flow of information which are decodable, which widen the scale of communication and speed the innovation. The density is also an aspect of social network which can influence the information flow. Just because of the force of unity's promotion to allocative efficiency, More density of the network, more efficiency of connection. And the thin network has higher absorption ability than thick one. So the difficult network structure and the difficult location in network all influence the flow of information. The article put forward to the hypothesis of “information flow is prone to convergence”.

Chapter 7 discusses the economic impact of information flow which is representated by the digital divide from 2001 to 2007. By researching the impact of information flow to digital divide qualitatively in scale and layer, we find that information flow's polarization extends the digital divide.

Chapter 8 takes advantage of the employment information as an example to analy－ze the social and economic effects of information flow. Migrant workers come into the city, form job searching to be employed and to the occupational mobility, the progress of raise in both social and economic status reflects the effect of information flow.On the basis of job search theory, combined with the characteristics of the labor market and migrant workers in current China, the job search model of migrant workers is build.Using the tracking data of migrant workers from national General Social Survey（CGSS）, on the ground of mathematical model, we analyze the impact of migrant workers' job search progress on their occupational mobility.

Chapter 9 explained the conclusion and limitation of this paper. Main conclusions were draw on based on preceding analysis. According to these conclusions, this paper posed some practical policy recommendations. Finally, the limitation and remaining problems of this study were pointed out.

Keywords: Information flow space autocorrelation gravity model Increasing returns to scale Social Network