Abstract: In the times of the data revolution, there is an urgent need to address numerous issues on how ongoing transformations of everyday life are influencing society and historians who study it. Thus, publications like “Information: A Historical Companion” are very important as they give our academic community a basis for a discussion on new possible theoretical and methodological backgrounds of historical research. However, while this book contains a range of diversified studies and deep reflections on information and the evolution of its sources, we wonder why among related notions like “data” and “knowledge” there was no place for such a core concept as the “information hierarchy”. Thus, we would like to raise a question on the role of the “DIKW-model” for history and to demonstrate how it could help to solve a common problem in the misuse of terminology. This opinion piece is a part of publications following the meeting dedicated to a discussion of the book “Information: A Historical Companion” organized by the “Historical Informatics” journal on October 26, 2021.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the role of The Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Asia-Pacific region (APR). In her article Vladimirova explains the political discourse term 'Asean centrality' that is used to express the idae of the regional leadership of ASEAN. The fact that the author has chosen to study this particular topic contributes to her choosing the network analysis as the main research method providing that it allows to calculate centrality ratios fo the region's states and to compare them. The author of the article analyzes drawbacks and benefits of existing network ASEAN models and offers her own calculation model. Even though her hypothesis about Asean centrality in APR's trade networks hasn't been proved, the analysis has demonstrated that ASEAN states play a highly important role in the region. In addition, the author fixes and verifies the growth trend in Vietnam's centrality which has never been mentioned in previous models. The research is based on international trade data for the period since 1996 till 2015 published by The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).