69 the development and availability of base technologies for the use of Latvian language in the digital environment; * ICT-oriented research support in economy sectors indirectly related to ICT (medicine, metallurgy, machinery, agricultural production, etc.). It includes the identification of possible use of ICT, prioritisation and support to cooperation between ICT companies and non-ICT industry companies that are actively investing in innovative ICT solutions; * training of higher qualification (with a doctorate degree) specialists to perform researches, tasks of academics and experts in Latvia’s ICT sector, as well as to work in ICT industry companies. The experience of EU structural funds planning period 2007-2013 shows that specifically the attraction of EU Structural funds to science has sharply increased the defended doctoral theses and the number of publications. During the period from 2000 to 2005 only 14 doctoral works have been defended in Latvian ICT industry, but starting from 2006, when EU Structural funds became available, an average of 10 doctoral works have been defended yearly. The number of defended doctoral theses shown in Table 4 characterises the ICT research activity in Latvia53. Table 4 Number of Defended Doctoral Theses in Information Technologies Year Total number doctoral theses 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 311 399 311 302 287 325 295 10 9 11 9 4 14 21 of Number of ICT industry doctoral theses 6 2 Table 4 shows that the number of defended doctoral theses increased significantly after 2010, coinciding with the availability of EU Structural funds support for doctoral studies. The number of publications (about 350 in the period from 2006 to 2011) of Latvian computer science researchers is in the 6th place among all branches of science. Communication Science Information society is characterised by continuously growing amount of information generated and consumed by society, which is becoming more demanding in terms of information search and retrieval systems and the public information literacy. These changes affect every area of the economy and are a challenge for all institutions and professions whose subject of work is the information. The role and functioning of the information in society and human life, including the perception of information and the effect, accumulation and usage, information impact on the social interaction, communication science and its subsectors. Social role of communication science is to encourage the information users to access the most relevant sources of information, 53 Section 5 “Computer Science” and Section 18 “Information Technology” of Scientific sector and subsector list of Latvian Council of Science have been referred to ICT research information_society_development_guidelines_2014_2020.docx; Information Society Development Guidelines 2014-2020