Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World-Wide Web

The World-Wide Web is growing quickly and being applied to many new types of communications. As a basis for studying organizational communications, Yates and Orlikowski [1, 2] proposed using genres. They defined genres as, “typified communicative actions characterized by similar substance and form and taken in response to recurrent situations” [1, p. 299]. They further suggested that communications in a new media will show both reproduction or adaptation of existing communicative genres as well as the emergence of new genres. We studied this phenomena on the World-Wide Web by examining randomly selected Web pages (100 in one sample and 1000 in a second) and categorizing the type of genre represented. Perhaps most interestingly, we saw examples of genres being adapted to take advantage of the linking and interactivity of the new medium, such as solicitations for help and genealogies. We suggest that Web site designers consider the genres that are appropriate for their situation and attempt to reuse familiar genres

Visualization in cyber-geography: reconsidering cartography's concept of visualization in current usercentric cybergeographic cosmologies

This article discusses some epistemological problems of a semiotic and cybernetic character in two current scientific cosmologies in the study of geographic information systems (GIS) with special reference to the concept of visualization in modern cartography. Setting off from Michael Batty’s prolegomena for a virtual geography and Michael Goodchild’s “Human-Computer-Reality-Interaction” as the field of a new media convergence and networking of GIS-computation of geo-data, the paper outlines preliminarily a common field of study, namely that of cybernetic geography, or just “cyber-geography) owing to the principal similarities with second order cybernetics. Relating these geographical cosmologies to some of Science’s dominant, historical perceptions of the exploring and appropriating of Nature as an “inventory of knowledge”, the article seeks to identify some basic ontological and epistemological dimensions of cybernetic geography and visualization in modern cartography. The points made is that a generalized notion of visualization understood as the use of maps, or more precisely as cybergeographic GIS-thinking seems necessary as an epistemological as well as a methodological prerequisite to scientific knowledge in cybergeography. Moreover do these generalized concept seem to lead to a displacement of the positions traditionally held by the scientist and lay-man citizen, that is not only in respect of the perception of the matter studied, i.e. the field of geography, but also of the manner in which the scientist informs the lay-man citizen in the course of action in the public participation in decision making; a displacement that seems to lead to a more critical, or perhaps even quasi-scientific approach as concerns the lay-man user

Supporting collaborative information retrieval in the virtual library

The advent of the virtual library is usually presented as a welcome development for library users. Unfortunately, this tends to reinforce the perception of the use of information resources as a solitary activity. In fact, as many studies have emphasised, information retrieval (IR) in the conventional library is often a highly collaborative activity, involving users' peers and experts such as librarians. Failure to take this into account in the design of virtual library services may result in its users being disadvantaged and denied timely and effective access to sources of assistance. Our focus here is on collaboration between users and librarians. We report an investigation of collaboration issues as seen from the perspective of librarians' and users' contexts and encapsulated in the notion of genre. Finally, we describe the design of a pilot multimedia-based system intended to support collaboration between librarians and IR system users

'R.I.P. man...u are missed and loved by many': entextualising moments of mourning on a Facebook Rest in Peace group site

Digital media offer new domains for people to articulate aspects of their everyday selves, as well as to share resources, views, attitudes, and emotions on an unprecedented scale (Barton and Lee 2013; Georgakopoulou 2006; Jones and Hafner 2012). The recent emergence of online environments as new sites for the temporal, spatial and social expansion of death and mourning (Brubaker and Hayes 2011; Brubaker, Hayes and Dourish 2013) has attracted scholarly interest in digital post-death rituals of mourning and memorialisation as an important social phenomenon (Walter et al. 2011; de Vries and Roberts 2004). While previous studies have been largely based on content analyses of individual MySpace logs and Facebook or discussion forum posts, the present study approaches digital memorial posts as entextualised moments of mourning shared with and for a networked audience (John 2013; Androutsopoulos 2014). The article analyses a corpus of Facebook memorial posts (N=525) as post sequences, wall events and texts, looking at how content on the site is produced, shared and discursively regimented. Based on the analysis, it is suggested that the intextualisation of moments of mourning on Facebook is participatory: it involves users’ selection of moments for public display relating to offline ceremonies of mourning, calendar-important dates or personal updates and contributing to the production of a textured wall in memory of the dead. The textuality of posts is found to rely on an ad hoc blending of formal genres of mourning and vernacular genres of writing dependent on (i) situational (date of posting activity, position in the post sequence) and (ii) extra-textual parameters (gender of poster, relationship with the deceased). The present socio-discursive investigation contributes to the growing, in-depth understanding of the texture and textuality of Web 2.0 mourning practices

Emergent Online Communities: The Structuring of Communicative Practices Over the Internet

Commercial enterprises are increasingly using online communities to allow customers to interact with each other before and after a purchase, and television shows are using them to get a closer grip on the audience. Although they have been around since the foundation of the Internet, little research has been done to understand the communicative interactions that arise within such online communities. In this paper, we use the notion of genres to study the communicative practices of three emergent online Internet communities at a university in the United States. Genres are organizing structures shaped by the communicative actions of individuals, and they provide an analytical lens to investigate those actions (Orlikowski and Yates 1994a, 1994b). We find that a parsimonious set of only six genres is needed to adequately classify almost 1,250 communications between the members of our three communities. Evidence also suggests that three of these genres are essential foundation blocks for communication in online communities. We also witness unmediated, explicit structuring of a genre, and the increase in participation this generates, which provides insight for those building and managing online communities. This study shows that genre analysis is a powerful tool to assist in understanding emergent online communities and we provide insight into how its use may facilitate growth and participation in the community

Lingvistička obilježja i aspekti blogova u kontekstu Netspeaka

Within the context of Netspeak, and English as a global language, weblogs (blogs) are defined as frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence, are becoming an increasingly popular form of communication on the World Wide Web. The present paper introduces blogs as an asynchronous type of online communication that share features with asynchronous discussion forums. The paper presents the origin of blogs, the blogosphere – who blogs and about what - and most importantly, why people blog. The scope of blogs is argued to have expanded dramatically over the past decade, making blogging more of a multifaceted tool than a specific type of Internet platform. The paper outlines the basic linguistic features of blogs and gives an overview of basic blog types and their corresponding linguistic properties and aspects. The paper serves the purposes of characterizing the properties of the emergent blog genre, situating it with respect to the broader genre ecology of the Internet. The idea is to provide an empirical snapshot of the weblog in its present stage, as a historical record for purposes of comparison with future stages of evolution, and to contribute to a theoretical understanding of how technological changes trigger the formation of new genres, which in turn may affect the genre ecology of a larger domain such as the Internet.U kontekstu Netspeaka i engleskoga kao globalnog jezika, blogovi, koji se definiraju kao često modificirane internetske stranice na kojima se unešeni podaci navode obrnutim kronološkim redoslijedom, postaju sve popularnijim oblikom komunikacije na Internetu. U ovome se radu daje prikaz blogova kao asinkronog vida online komunikacije koji dijeli neka od razlikovnih obilježja sa asinkronim forumima za diskusiju. U radu se daje prikaz podrijetla blogova, predstavlja se blogosfera – tko blogira i o čemu – i, najvažnije, zašto ljudi rade blogove. Smatra se da se broj vrsta blogova drastično proširio tokom protekloga desetljeća, što blogove čini višestruko korisnim sredstvom nego običnom vrstom internetske platforme. U radu se prikazuju osnovna lingvistička obilježja blogova, kao i prikaz osnovnih vrsta blogova i njihovih lingvističkih obilježja i apsekata. U radu se karakteriziraju obilježja bloga kao žanra u nastanku koji svoje mjesto nalazi negdje između ostalih mnogobrojnih žanrova na Internetu. Glavna je ideja empirijski predstaviti blogove u njihovom trenutačnom stanju i obliku, radi usporedbe s njegovim budućim stadijima evolucije, istovremeno pridonoseći teorijskom shvaćanju procesa putem kojeg tehnološke promjene pokreću formiranje novih žanrova, što, s druge strane, može utjecati na cijeli skup žanrova iz šire domene kao što je Internet

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

IS AN IMAGE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? NET REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BOOK INDUSTRY

[EN] This study focuses on the book industry homepage, a digital genre which has emerged as a result of the many multimedia and technical capabilities of the online system. Traditionally, publishing firms have made use of catalogues, leaflets and brochures for information and self-promotion. With the advent of the Internet, however, these traditional methods have been gradually transferred to the digital context, which propitiates the evolution of existing genres and the emergence of new ones, the so-called cybergenres. By means of the homepage, publishing companies represent themselves and project their image on the new computer environment using a wide range of devices, such as icons, animated and non-animated images, and links, which make up the visual rhetoric of the genre. Nonetheless, the verbal element still plays a crucial role in the realisation of the promotional purpose of the genre, especially in the company's profile section.http://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2006.681Gea Valor, ML. (2006). IS AN IMAGE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? NET REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BOOK INDUSTRY. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas. 1. doi:10.4995/rlyla.2006.681.SWORD1Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of Written Discourse. A Genre-Based View. London & New York: Continuum.Breure, L. (2001). "Development of the genre concept." Document in: http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/leen/GenreDev/GenreDevelopment.htm [access date: 23.10.2005]Crowston, K. and M. Williams (1997). "Reproduced and emergent genres of communication on the World-Wide Web," in R. H. Sprague (ed.) Proceedings of the 30th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences(HICSS '97). Maui, Hawaii, VI,30-39. Document in: http://crowston.syr.edu/papers/genres-journal.html [access date: 23.10.2005] https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.1997.665482Dillon, A. and B. Gushrowski (2000). "Genres and the Web: Is the personal home page the first unique digital genre?" Journal of the American Society of Information Science51.2: 202-205. Document in: http://memex.lib.indiana.edu/adillon/genre.html. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(2000)51:23.0.CO;2-RFernández Sánchez, C. (2002). "E-bank web sites: an evolving cybergenre," in S. Posteguillo, E. Ortells, J. R. Palmer, A. Bolaños and A. Alcina (eds.) Internet in Linguistics, Translation and Literary Studies. Castelló: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I: 291-302.Fortanet, I., J. C. Palmer and S. Posteguillo (1999). "The emergence of a new genre: advertising on the Internet (netvertising)." Hermes, Journal of Linguistics23, 93-113.Gea Valor, M. L. (2005). "Advertising books: a linguistic analysis of blurbs." Ibérica, 10, 41-62.Posteguillo, S. (2003). Netlinguistics: Language, Discourse and Ideology in Internet. Castelló: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.Posteguillo, S. and N. Edo (2005). "The ceramic industrial community through its representation in traditional and digital genres." Proceedings of the 4th AELFE International Conference, 83-94.Regier, W. (1998). "Scholarly press websites." The Journal of Electronic Publishing4: 1.Document in: http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/regier.html [access date: 17.10.2005] https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0004.108Ruiz, N. (2003). "The university homepage: definition and evolution from a generic perspective," in I. Fortanet, J. C. Palmer and S. Posteguillo (eds.) Linguistic Studies in Academic and Professional English. Castelló: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 275-298.Shepherd, M. and C. Watters (1998). "The evolution of cybergenres," in R. H. Sprague (ed.) Proceedings of the 31st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '98). Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE-Computer Society, 97-109. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.1998.651688Shepherd, M. and C. Watters (1999). "The functionality attribute of cybergenres," in R. H.Sprague (ed.) Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '99). Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE-Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.1999.772650Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Document in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki [access date: 9.11.2005]

The Digital representation of an industrial cluster through its corporate website image: online discourse and genre analysis

The corporate (website) image offered by industrial clusters in general and by the Spanish ceramic industrial cluster in particular is enhanced by the use of genres that fit and follow the logic of the times in terms of evolution (cybergenres). These digital genres extend the potential of traditional ones in terms of meeting the expectations and reflecting the cornmunicative practices of discourse communities, allowing the creation of a coherent, effective and easily identifiable corporate website image