The presented paper is a synthesis of the qualitative research part results of the "Information technology in civil society" CEU/Columbia University/NSF international empirical research conducted between 2001-2003 in four East European countries. The case studies were based on personal communication with leaders and key figures of NGOs as well as on document and web-site analysis. The principal question here was, whether any kinds of organizational and IT configurations or patterns can be found in the real civil society, for what purposes and how these NGOs use the most modern information and communication techniques in their activities, thus the focus was rather on their real life appearance and work than virtual participation in the public sphere. The common field of the two research - quantitative and qualitative - parts was the information technology clustering, which served as a guideline when trying to group the case study NGOs and find general patterns.




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