Football Fans, Their Information, The Web And The Personal Home Page

From the early days of the Internet to the present day, the World Wide Web has developed into one of the world's largest information resources. One of the first genres of web pages, which was also one of the first information resources, was the Personal Home Page (PHP). Over this same period of time, professional football in England has created the world's richest league and by extension an abundance of football related PHPs. This study investigates the role of the PHP as an information resource using the subject area of professional football in England. A holistic approach is taken so as to view the PHP from a broader context, as one information resource amongst many, including non-PHPs and even offline information resources (e.g. reference books). Within this study, football fans are interviewed along with web authors, surveys are carried out (by distributing both online and offline questionnaires) and research is also carried out online, examining football related PHPs and online web collaborations. Results suggest that whilst there are many informational benefits to be found on PHPs, such as plentiful unique information, they have low levels of use amongst football fans. The thesis concludes by proposing an avenue to the maximisation of the informational benefit of PHPs through a blueprint for a type of communal football website called the Club Community Composite Page (CCCP). Overall, several contributions are made to the field of information science, most notably attaining an improved understanding of PHPs as unique and accurate information providers online and devising new research methods for PHP research. In particular, the method of identification of PHPs developed here will be a useful tool for future researchers of PHPs. The contributions of this thesis are likely to be of value to researchers working in relevant sub-fields of information science, such as information seeking, web genres, grey literature and virtual communities