Analyzing Websites E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
From a cluster of interconnected HTML pages to online service platforms, websites are constantly changing in form and function. These transformations have led, on the one hand, to human and social sciences renewing or inventing analytical methodologies; and on the other hand, to a reconsideration of the practices of non-specialists and digital professionals. The Web factory is equally included on the agenda of communication training, according to an alternative approach that is complementary to the one that has been implemented for computer scientists. From these two perspectives and drawing upon several case studies, Analyzing Websites presents epistemological and methodological contributions from researchers in Information and Communication Sciences exploring websites as sociotechnical, semi-discursive and communicational devices. This study covers website design as well as their integration into the digital strategies of organizations in the public, associative and private sectors.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Introduction
I.1. An object that is long-standing and yet still current
I.2. The website as a socio-technical device
I.3. The website as a semiodiscursive device
1.4. The website as a communication device
I.5. And what comes after this?
1.6. References
PART 1: Websites as a Socio-technical Device
1 Observing the Web through the Lens of Websites
1.1. Introduction
1.2. The website as a space and an architecture
1.3. The pioneer Web (before 2000)
1.4. The citation Web (from 2000 to 2005)
1.5. The Web known as Web 2.0 (from 2005 to 2010)
1.6. The social Web (from 2010 to 2015)
1.7. An affective and artificial Web (2015 to the present)
1.8. Conclusion
1.9. References
2 Is the Web a Semiodiscursive Object?
2.1. Introduction
2.2. How to do relevant data sets with Web data? The making of a complex object of research
2.3. Standing the test of time: surveys and methods
2.4. Violence against data: issues of interpretation
2.5. Conclusion
2.6. References
3 Expertise from Websites: Pedagogical Perspectives in Information and Communication
3.1. Introduction
3.2. What is the role of website expertise in information and communication?
3.3. What are the benefits of semio-rhetorical, critical and socio-technical approaches for the learner?
3.4. Conclusion
3.5. Appendices
3.6. References
PART 2: The Website as a Semiodiscursive Device
4 Semiotics of Digital Design: From Ethos to Ethics
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Semiotics of webdesign: from 2004 to 2021
4.3. Beyond its ethos, the ethical aim of digital design
4.4. Interrogating the semiotic interrelations between the strata of digital design
4.5. Conclusion
4.6. References
5 Social Semiotic Approach of Press Websites: Genesis of a Method
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Epistemological and methodological issues
5.3. The first field: a critical decoding of interfaces
5.4. Second field: toward a social semiotic approach of websites
5.5. Interpretative hypotheses and interpretative filters
5.6. Conclusion
5.7. Appendices
5.8. References
6 Analyzing the Mobilization Against the LPR on Twitter: Theoretical Issues and Methodological Challenges
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Multidimensional approach to digital social networks
6.3. Ethical questions and methodological challenges
6.4. Presentation of the six sub-corpora
6.5. Outlook and analytical perspectives
6.6. Conclusion
6.7. References
7 Metaphor and Analysis of Websites: Transformations of a Media Object
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Uses of metaphors for analyzing websites and digital communications
7.3. Websites that visualize open data: making sense using the metaphor as inquiry
7.4. Conclusion
7.5. References
PART 3: The Website as a Communication Device
8 Thematic Analysis of Hyperlinks: A Taxonomic Approach
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Analytical framework for an info-communicational reading of websites
8.3. The interest of a taxonomic reading grid for websites
8.4. Presentation of the methodological approach
8.5. Primary results
8.6. Conclusion
8.7. Appendices
8.8. References
9 The Documediality of Cross-border Organizations
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Theoretical and methodological anchoring in semiotics applied to the media
9.3. First step: create a reading of three cross-border organizational models through the lens of documentality
9.4. Step two: build a corpus of websites from the three cross-border organizational models considered
9.5. Stage three: identify the memory processes to unravel the skein of cross-border narratives presented to audiences
9.6. Step four: qualitatively comparing the results
9.7. Conclusion
9.8. References
10 “Tell Us Your Data”, Between Euphemization, Standardization, and Digital Poetics
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Epistemological and methodological issues
10.3. A poetics of the visible and the audible
10.4. Conclusion
10.5. References
List of Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1. The five periods of the Web
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. Educational program for lessons on website analysis
Table 3.2. Example of a grid co-designed by M1 students
Table 3.3. Grid 1 (Massou 2016)
Table 3.4. Grid 2 (Massou 2017)
Table 3.5. Grid 3 (Massou 2009)
Table 3.6. Grid 4 (Massou and Morelli 2009)
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. The different strata of meaning of usage technologies
Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Group 1 (21 students, average age: 23 years old, 80% female)
Table 5.2. Group 2 (22 students in masters 1 professional digital communicatio...
Table 5.3. Hypothesis and interpretative filters
Table 5.4. Hypothesis and interpretative filters
Table 5.5. Hypothesis and interpretative filters
Table 5.6. The main stages of an experiment in social semiotics of websites
Table 5.7. Tool sheets used in the educational context
Chapter 6
Table 6.1. Stages of forming the corpus
Table 6.2. Blank template for visualizing metadata
Table 6.3. Synoptic view on the six sub-corpora of the work
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. List of classes in the HLU taxonomy
Table 8.2. Distribution of HLUs by university
Table 8.3. Distribution of all HLUs by class
Table 8.4. User profiles by HLU and by university
Table 8.5. Appendix 1 – profile of universities from the corpus
Table 8.6. Appendix 2 – HLUs classified by university
Chapter 9
Table 9.1. General conditions for the creation of a cross-border organization ...
Table 9.2. Historical documentary records specified according to cross-border ...
Table 9.3. A priori historical, specified according to the websites of the cro...
Chapter 10
Table 10.1. Quotes from the corpus showing the need break away
Table 10.2. Quotes from the Livre blanc social media listening: du bruit au si...
Table 10.3. Analysis of the narrative of the Livre blanc social media listenin...
Table 10.4. Examples of demonstrating the amount of social “data” accessible b...
Table 10.5. Examples of quotations from the corpus including the term “convers...
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1. Typology of the device in communications research conducted by org...
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Web page for the film The Fifth Element on the website www.allocin...
Figure 1.2. Screenshot of a video advertisement for AlloCiné found on a CD-ROM...
Figure 1.3. Home page of the site www.allocine.fr, December 5, 1998
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Figure 1.4. DVD page from the website www.allocine.fr on December 14, 2003 (so...
Figure 1.5. “My AlloCiné” page from the website www.allocine.fr, November 16, ...
Figure 1.6. Excerpt from the page “AlloCiné blogs” from the site www.allocine....
Figure 1.7. Extract from the “Allocated Service” page of the website www.alloc...
Figure 1.8. Excerpt from the home page of the website www.allocine.fr, October...
Figure 1.9. Image of the Allociné chatbot. “Hello and welcome. I am the AlloCi...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Homepage of the website lapetition.be, retrieved from the Internet...
Figure 2.2. Home page of the website lapetition.be, taken from the Internet Ar...
Figure 2.3. Integration of photographs from the #Monumental competition into t...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Screenshot of the website BFMTV.com taken on November 8, 2018 at 1...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. The narrative coverage of the news.
Figure 6.2. Interweaving of individual identity. The tweet says: “I don’t know...
Figure 6.3. Interweaving of collective identity. The top part of the post refe...
Figure 6.4. The challenge, a performative dimension. Followers of the page are...
Figure 6.5. Images demonstrating a playful form of communication. The tweet re...
Figure 6.6. Visual gags. Here is a play on words in French but can be translat...
Figure 6.7. Inter-iconic GIF. The tweet strongly references living out a plot ...
Figure 6.8. Inter-iconicity: quotes. The tweet references the institution bein...
Figure 6.9. Inter-iconicity: transformation. The tweet references the iconic F...
Figure 6.10. Discourse/counter-discourse. The tweet references how the LPPR is...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. “New York City: 1836 vs. Today”.
Figure 7.2. “Nor: a paranoid cartography”.
Figure 7.3. “Top Secret America”.
Figure 7.4. “Cinema Redux”.
Figure 7.5. “The preservation of favored traces”.
Figure 7.6. “Le Pariteur”
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Figure 7.7. “MPs’ expenses”.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. Framework for the analysis of hyperlinks in the context of an orga...
Figure 8.2. Facets and instantiation of the hyperlink.
Figure 8.3. Hyperlinks and websites.
Figure 8.4. Example of menu bars (main/secondary).
Figure 8.5. Classification of themes in order of appearance in the main menu b...
Figure 8.6. Presentation of the dominant classes of HLU with rank 1 (in percen...
Figure 8.7. “Institutional communication” profile from two universities....
Figure 8.8. Mixed profiles with “Education”.
Figure 8.9. Atypical profiles.
Figure 8.10. Distribution of types of targeted users.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. Upper part of the home page from the Euroregion website, Italian v...
Figure 9.2. Upper part of the home page from the Euroregion website, English v...
Figure 9.3. Upper part of the home page from the ecoregion website, English ve...
Figure 9.4. Revitalization of the legendary Dolomitic territory through the va...
Figure 9.5. Reactivation of the historic Banatean territory through the mappin...
Figure 9.6. Scientific mediation of the military heritage of the Euroregion, I...
Figure 9.7. Cultural mediation of the architectural and religious heritage fro...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. Translated quote from the cover of the Livre blanc social media l...
Figure 10.2. Page 16 (translated) from Livre blanc social media listening: du ...
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Introduction
Begin Reading
List of Authors
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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SCIENCES
Computer Science, Field Directors –Valérie Berthé and Jean-Charles Pomerol
Digital Documentation, Subject Head – Fabrice Papy
Analyzing Websites
Coordinated by
Luc Massou
Patrick Mpondo-Dicka
Nathalie Pinède
First published 2023 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the under mentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2023The rights of Luc Massou, Patrick Mpondo-Dicka and Nathalie Pinède to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023930464
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78945-103-0
ERC code:PE6 Computer Science and Informatics PE6_10 Web and information systems, database systems, information retrieval and digital libraries, data fusionSH3 The Social World, Diversity, Population SH3_12 Communication and information, networks, media SH3_13 Digital social research
Foreword
Sébastien ROUQUETTE
Communication et Sociétés, Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
In the age of social media, are websites outdated? To answer this question, all we need to do is look at the communication policies of different organizations. They all have decided to continue building and creating content for their sites. And there are many reasons why they are doing this. A website provides a structured way for an organization to communicate online, starting from an organized home page and a permanent menu. This gives the organization the opportunity to respond reactively to current events. It provides an opportunity to respond to requests from Internet users, who have come to expect that any sufficiently large organization will have at least one website to present itself to the world. It allows more in-depth communication at a lower cost.
In fact, the digitalization of our means of communication has created a new communications axiom: the more social media are created, the more vast and fragmented the digital public space is, the more necessary it is for every organization to have a communications tool that serves as a reference point. From Instagram and Facebook to Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest, the constantly expanding number of social media outlets does not just mean that websites are not superfluous, it makes them increasingly necessary!
In this exponentially growing ocean of digital signs, the website acts as a “flagship” in organizations’ communications strategies. It acts as a base and primary reference point for the communications strategy of the organization, to which the group’s social media accounts and satellite sites will link and refer back. This is just one of the many reasons that make it critically important to define a website strategy customized to the group’s global communication policy, which is visible to and understandable by users. That’s why the study of website strategies was analyzed in a previous book produced from a body of collective research: Site internet : audit et stratégie1.
And now, Luc Massou, Patrick Mpondo-Dicka and Nathalie Pinède are expanding on this initial scientific work by coordinating this new book. The analyses of the websites presented here serve to perfect our understanding of websites from both a methodological angle and a pedagogical angle.
Given the rapid and dramatic changes in websites in the 2000s and 2010s, such as the mobile Internet, the development of online service platforms, the explosion of video content, addressing these issues is a difficult task. This requires consideration for the ever-increasing dimensions of websites: technical, graphic, aesthetic and social. Yet, this exercise has now become a necessity, given that the ability to design, analyze, and use a website are now frequently required professional skills.
However, one of the great qualities of this book coordinated by Luc Massou, Patrick Mpondo-Dicka and Nathalie Pinède is that it tackles these issues by following two essential guidelines.
The first is that no approach is to be excluded, whether theoretical or practical; whether semiological examinations, studies of enunciation, social semiotics or whether taking into account the pragmatic acquisition of digital culture or the challenges of data visualization. This collective effort avoids the pitfall of establishing a false dichotomy between operational and theoretical skill sets, as well as between ethical considerations and practical effectiveness, instead seeking to promote an opening for new knowledge. Affirming this fact does not imply that the contribution of Website analytics centers on the development of new technologies or techniques for website development. Rather, it implies two things. The first is that it involves the study of websites, as well as other questions developed in communications training: it is impossible to make an in-depth analysis of a practice or a professional problem – such as that of the impact of the widespread commercial exploitation of data as part of the communications strategies of large companies’ websites – through dissociating operational and theoretical knowledge. To demonstrate the value created by its insights – whether comparative, historical, economic, pragmatic, etc. – communications research must, among other things, understand and integrate analyses of the daily professional practices and constraints of the communicators whose productions are studied. If this is neglected, essential explanations may be missed entirely. The second is that deploying methodologies for the ideological, graphical or even technical analysis of Internet sites makes it possible both to raise decision-makers’ awareness related to these methods of analysis, and to train communicators in the implementation of such procedures.
The second guideline of this book is educational. By integrating a diversified methodological tool into its analyses and extensive experiences obtained in teaching, this book is a clear demonstration of how research and education complement each other. In this regard, this book responds to the need to train communications students in defining and deploying organizations’ online communication strategies, thus satisfying the needs for digital skills expected by companies, communities and associations. By explaining how to evaluate, analyze and produce websites, and by transferring these skills and allowing them to evolve, this book thus contributes to training all these future professionals who will decide on the identity, content, graphics, services, architecture or even the hypertext opening of communicational tools as rich and complex as websites.
Note
1
Rouquette, S. (2017).
Site Internet : audit et stratégie
. De Boeck, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Introduction
Luc MASSOU1, Patrick MPONDO-DICKA2and Nathalie PINÈDE3
1CREM, Université de Lorraine, Metz, France
2LERASS, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, France
3MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Pessac, France
I.1. An object that is long-standing and yet still current
From a set of interconnected HTML pages to online service platforms and digital social networks, websites have constantly changed their forms and functions, prompting the humanities and social sciences to renew or invent analytical methodologies on the one hand, and on the other hand to think of praxis, courses of action adapted to non-specialists and future players in digital communication. Additionally, the production of online elements has been on the agenda of communications training since its emergence among the general public and professionals in the early 1990s, according to a different and complementary approach to that implemented for computer scientists. This book seeks to compare these two perspectives – methodological and pedagogical – in information and communication science research by studying Web communication in its technical, discursive, methodological and social dimensions, from the time it is designed to its integration into the digital and communication practices of organizations, whether in the public, non-profit or private sector.
To accomplish this, this book draws on a cycle of scientific study days that began at the end of 2015 at Université Toulouse 2 Jean-Jaurès, based on a deliberately critical question: is website analysis still relevant in information and communication? Six years after its initiation, four more study days were organized between 2017 and 2021 at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Paris), at the Université Clermont Auvergne, and finally at the Université de Lorraine, to carry out further reflection and expand the extent of the research on this subject, the dynamics of which are always present. On this basis, a first collaborative book was written: Site internet : audit et stratégie, under the direction of Rouquette (2017), which includes the participation of some of the authors who had been present during the initial session in 2015. In order to highlight all the researchers who contributed to these sessions between 2015 and 2021, this book, the second in this series, builds on and completes the first part, and will interconnect with a third part released by the same publisher, Digital presences of organizations, to be published in 2022, also under our co-direction. This will allow us to offer a detailed overview of the research carried out on an object that is both long-standing and yet still current, whose methods of analysis took some time to come into being, and about which we reviewed only four books expressly devoted to the issue in 2015: Penser le web-design. Modèles sémiotiques pour les projets multimédias by Pignier and Drouillat (2004), Les sites web. Conception, description et évaluation by Stockinger (2005), L’analyse des sites internet. Une radiographie du cyberespace by Rouquette (2009) and Manuel d’analyse du Web en sciences humaines et sociales, coordinated by Barats (2013).
Figure I.1.Typology of the device in communications research conducted by organizations (Appel and Heller 2010, p. 45)
For this second volume to be released on the basis of our 5 scientific study days, we have brought together 12 authors to expand on epistemological, methodological and also pedagogical approaches to the analysis of websites, which we have structured into three sections based on the notion of the device, widely used in information and communication sciences (Charlier and Peeters 1999; Leblanc 1999; Appel et al. 2010), and in particular for the communication research of the organizations that interest us here. As noted by Appel and Heller (2010) on the basis of a review of the literature in this specific field, three logical mechanisms of interpreting the device can be distinguished here (see Figure I.1): the logic of arrangement (related elements), analytical logic (mediation) and critical logic (ideology, control).
If it were necessary to position our 10 chapters using this typology broken down along three main axes, and by considering websites as communication devices for organizations1, we could write them mostly following the analytical logic proposed here. For their part, here is how their authors (Appel and Heller 2010, p. 41) define it:
A second level of meaning designates the device as a process that the researcher will have highlighted and which takes two orientations: social/technical co-construction and co-construction of meaning. These two different meanings refer to two approaches to research in CIS, and to two epistemologies: on the one hand, communication as a social construction with a connection from research to sociology, and on the other hand, to communication as a construction of meaning with a connection to the sciences of language.
In the three parts of our book, the authors will use this analytical logic in their examination of websites, considering them as processes of mediation comprising social, technical, and semiotic constructs, and which we have grouped into three non-exclusive subsets: the website as a socio-technical, semiodiscursive and communicational device. In each contribution, the authors will develop in greater detail their notional, methodological and/or pedagogical choices and will rely on different examples of analyzed corpus of websites, if necessary.
I.2. The website as a socio-technical device
Considering websites as socio-technical devices involves analyzing the way they bring social actors into interaction with different technological systems on the Web, which have been constantly evolving since its entry into widespread use among the general public in the early 1990s. This is precisely what Camille Alloing proposes in his chapter, where he historicizes five periods of the Web in the communication practices of organizations: the pioneer era of the Web (before 2000), the citation Web (2000–2005), Web 2.0 (2005–2010), the social Web (2010–2015) and finally the affective Web (2015 to the present). For each of these periods, the author identifies the characteristics of the site as a formal and technical system, describing the nature of interactions and uses made by Internet users, and explaining the digital communications strategies of the organizations involved.
From a more epistemological perspective of the analysis of websites, mixing socio-technical devices and semiodiscursive approaches, Christine Barats and Julia Bonaccorsi will then highlight the points to observe and the difficulties to be faced when interpreting messages transmitted through websites, where the abundance and heterogeneity of digital content and data prompt us to question the way they are produced and how they circulate on the Web, but also the mechanisms and conditions of how they are collected by researchers. Here again, the importance of the socio-technical devices and the place of technical mediation are at the heart of the reasoning, upstream and downstream of the analysis.
Finally, taking a pedagogical perspective, Luc Massou proposes a personal implementation of training experiences in the expertise of websites in Bachelor’s and Master’s courses in information and communication, for future specialists in digital communication. Whether based on various website analysis grids from the scientific and sometimes professional literature or created ad hoc with Master’s students, it is a critical and reflective assessment, both in terms of contributions and limitations, but also methodological constraints and the acquisition of professional skills in the use of these socio-technical devices on the Web.
I.3. The website as a semiodiscursive device
The second part covers the theoretical and methodological approaches that are part of a mainly semiotic perspective, which is based on an analysis of discourses and/or interfaces in websites. Here, Nicole Pignier puts forward a definition of a semiotics of digital design, which involves questioning the way we “make sense” of Web design, in order to create a link between the instances of enunciation – organizations – and co-enunciation – the viewers who use websites. She presents a methodology for a semiotic analysis of multimodality and the interface design of websites, also specifying its limits, and concluding on the enunciative and ethical interrelations of digital design.
Taking a perspective that is once again interconnected through a pedagogical experience at Master’s level university courses, Alexandra Saemmer and Nolwenn Tréhondart present a methodology for analyzing websites that is rooted in pragmatic semiotics, but which shifts the focus from the interpretative results to the study of its process of construction. This social semiotics of websites thus compels learners to collectively debate the way their interpretative filters are constructed, so as to make them more aware of this process, and to promote a more reflective posture among future digital communications professionals.
Justine Simon, for her part, explains the theoretical and methodological challenges of the spaces of expression and communication that have been created in the form of social networks such as Twitter. Based on a case study conducted on discursive content spread through this type of online device, she characterizes the diverse forms of online mobilization, between technological dimension, social practice and semiodiscursive practice. The social experience within an online community thus takes shape through choices of interdiscursivity, narrativity and argumentativity, and the variety of this hypertextualized writing thus allows us to grasp the logics of communication according to their authors.
Finally, Pergia Gkouskou studies the relevance of the concept of the metaphor in the epistemological analysis of the “website” object, while positioning it within the evolution of the media landscape. Based on a study of the relevant materials (open data, archives) as well as of institutional websites, the author questions the mechanisms of metaphor (or “visual textualizations”) that emerge between designers, users and techno-semiotic devices within a context of hyper-mediated simulation in continuous evolution.
1.4. The website as a communication device
The third and final part brings together chapters based on an analysis of a clearly constituted corpus of reference material to identify the underlying communications issues for the organizations that designed them. In her taxonomic study of 14 institutional websites of universities, Nathalie Pinède bases her methodological approach on the classification of the content found on their home pages from the textual anchors of hypertext links, which she names “hypertext lexical units”. By analyzing their dominant classes on this reference group, she reveals informational profiles both in terms of the choices of content published and also in the users primarily targeted by each site.
By choosing a corpus of websites built for international organizations, Marie-Hélène Hermand structures her communication analysis on the tangled web of connections between territories and media devices, and on the concept of intermediate public space (as spaces of proximity and transition into public space), to understand the transitions and/or the transformations rooted in collective imaginations. By studying the semantic universes proposed in their websites, the author thus models the communicational processes of these organizations and the way they redefine the territories on which they depend.
Finally, Camille Rondot gives an analysis of the story websites tell about the new professional skill sets involving “social data listening”. On the basis of a corpus of websites made for agencies and consultants in the field of digital communications, the author analyzes the mechanisms of a professional rhetoric that implies both a personification and a euphemization of the strategies in play. Her semiodiscursive approach to this body of websites will thus reveal a communicational pretension, that is to say, a project aimed at creating a new profession for a certain conception of communications, from which she will identify the semantic and discursive markers.
I.5. And what comes after this?
As noted earlier, we will complete this first volume published by ISTE Ltd, which was the result of our scientific study days, with a second collective work under our direction. This work will more specifically address the issue of the digital presence of organizations in digital ecosystems (the Web, social networks, the data Internet): communication strategies differentiated according to the types and audiences of organizations, multicultural communication at different scales and construction of online narratives.
1.6. References
Appel, V. and Heller, T. (2010). Dispositif et recherche en communication des organisations. In
Les dispositifs d’information et de communication : concept, usages et objets
, Appel, V., Boulanger, H., Massou, L. (eds). De Boeck, Brussels.
Appel, V., Boulanger, H., Massou, L. (2010).
Les dispositifs d’information et de communication : concept, usages et objets
. De Boeck, Brussels.
Barats, C. (2013).
Manuel d’analyse du web en Sciences Humaines et Sociales
. Armand Colin, Paris.
Charlier, P. and Peeters, H. (1999). Contributions à une théorie du dispositif.
Hermès, La revue
, 25, 15–23.
Leblanc, G. (1999). Du déplacement des modalités de contrôle.
Hermès, La revue
, 25, 233–242.
Pignier, N. and Drouillat, B. (2004).
Penser le webdesign. Modèles sémiotiques pour les projets multimédias
. L’Harmattan, Paris.
Rouquette, S. (2009).
L’analyse des sites internet : une radiographie du cyberespace
. De Boeck, Brussels.
Rouquette, S. (2017).
Site Internet : audit et stratégie
. De Boeck, Brussels.
Stockinger, P. (2005).
Les sites web : conception, description, et évaluation
. Hermès-Lavoisier, Paris.
Note
1
Here, we consider these devices as instruments “for capturing and understanding mediation processes and communication situations (or contracts), by identifying the components in play and the way they are connected” (Appel et al. 2010, p. 10).
PART 1Websites as a Socio-technical Device
1Observing the Web through the Lens of Websites
Camille ALLOING
LabFluens, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada
1.1. Introduction
The analysis of websites is a topic that has long interested information and communications scientists, who have addressed it from different angles and with different approaches: semiotics, interface design, public and organizational uses (Proulx 2005) or referencing techniques (Domenget and Michel 2014).
However, defining what a website is remains difficult, as there are many entry keys, but also the object itself: ever since the creation of first HTML pages, though the underlying technologies have evolved little, the forms and purposes of these digital objects have changed according to the trends and expectations of the public or designers (blogs, platforms, showcase sites), their names and their architectures vary. As Pinède points out (2018):
The current hybridization of forms and genres at the center of the interface, the porosity between websites and social media, the possible interweaving of endogenous (content proposed by the speaker) and exogenous elements [...] blur the picture we have of websites, which can and should be understood as a socio-technical device.
In this chapter, we also want to approach the website as a socio-technical device, and more particularly as an attribute of the digital territory of organizations. We use the term “attribute” to mean that which qualifies an object, the essential property of a thing. In this case, an organization’s website is what qualifies its online presence, serving as a gateway to other spaces where it deploys its content and speeches, that structures its digital territory (Le Béchec and Alloing 2018) and gives it authority and legitimacy to address certain topics:
Thus, in order to orient themselves within constantly changing digital territories, to focus their attention on the most relevant content, and to ensure that their own information flows in the desired collectives, users seek to identify forms of authority that facilitate the circulation and transposition of signs. These authorities are not governmental, as in the case of “physical” territories, but authorities that have the ability to make sense of the multitude of documents and information that are in circulation.
The websites of organizations, by participating in making sense of this information that is circulating, are at the center of how the Web functions. They are a reflection of its evolutions and the communication practices that are deployed on the Web. They adapt and arrange themselves in order to optimize this digital territory, this authority held by organizations. They are no longer just attributes of the presence of organizations, they are also an attribute of the Web as a whole. Thus, this chapter will not seek to analyze the evolution of organizations’ websites to discuss what they are, but rather will attempt to understand what purpose they serve for organizations. In other words: why are websites made?
Since information and communications sciences can be seen as sciences of mediation (Peray 2008) and especially of circulation (of speech, signs, etc.), the problem that will be addressed more specifically here is the following: how is the analysis of websites relevant to observing intercommunal mediations and circulations on the Web? This question is based on two postulates:
The websites created for organizations as a lens for analyzing developments on the Web make it possible to consider digital communication strategies as a reflection of the conventions of Web professionals, communication trends and technical standards or Web use.
The website puts information produced by and about organizations into circulation. The website is both the means for and the subject of this circulation.
As for the works that we have been able to carry out on “digital metrics” (Alloing 2020), we therefore propose here a genealogical approach that proposes looking at a website not as an object detached from the environments where it evolves, but to analyze it as being a constituent part of such environments.
1.2. The website as a space and an architecture
Even more specifically, we propose considering websites as spaces within territories, and as an architecture within infrastructures. A space in which we evolve as an audience, and which is based on an architecture, that is to say, principles of organization (coding) and arrangement of signs and content (design). This space is itself located within larger digital territories (delimited by domain names, hypertext links, etc.) where signs and information related to organizations circulate and attach themselves. These territories are found within the Internet, which is an infrastructure – that is, a set of physical and permanent installations, as well as a set of productive forces, ideologies and economies that underlie it all. It is therefore necessary to manage to make constant changes of focus, back and forth between the website within its territory, and the infrastructures into which it is inserted.
In order to structure this navigation, we may rely on four concepts. First, we can question what shapes the website, the statements that perform it (Austin 1975; Denis 2006). Performativity refers to “situations in which the object to which a work relates [...] is not simply noted or described, but modified, or even called to exist” (Muniesa and Callon 2009). Observing the websites of organizations, and their construction of these websites, requires us to consider the following:
The website
is
the organization. It brings together a set of statements and signs (words, logos, images, etc.) to distinguish the organization, to define it, making it the embodiment of the online organization. This is why it is common to read “check out our website” or “we’re online”.
Websites are part of this presence because they are indicated or used as such. Even if the technologies that form this presence are a blog or something of that nature, the fact of referring to it as a website gives it this qualification, this attribute.
The way to name this site, to define whether it is efficient (metrics) or well built (design), is based on a set of conventions that evolve over time. Conventions are understood to mean “collectively established cultural forms that allow for coordinating and evaluating” (Reynaud and Richebé 2007). They reflect what communication practitioners and designers formally or informally establish as being “the right way” to make a site or to use it.
If it is possible to question the way websites are shaped (enunciations and conventions) using these two concepts, it is equally useful to look at what the website itself gives shape to. We can thus think of the website as a device for “qualculation” (Callon and Law 2005), especially when it becomes (or is inserted into) a platform (such as e-commerce). The website thus becomes a space in which entities detached from their original contexts (a photo of an employee, a video, an advertising text, an Internet user comment) are arranged, and which are then reworked, manipulated and transformed in order to be integrated into a single space, like a web page. This arrangement allows the organization to evaluate the value of the site using audience measurement tools (how many visitors on this page that groups heterogeneous elements by creating a new object?), and search engine algorithms to associate this set of qualitative and quantitative elements to position a site or a page in their results.
Finally, we can consider the website as a commensuration device (Espeland and Stevens 1998). Commensuration refers to the process that transforms qualitative elements into quantitative elements to reduce and simplify disparate information to compare it with other information. For example, on the website of an organization, a tool for comparing the prices of products and services between them is made available. This commensuration requires a set of technical standards, the main ones of which we will examine subsequently.
To answer the above problem and its associated hypotheses, this chapter is structured according to five main time periods, for purposes more heuristic than historical, and which will make it possible to follow this evolution of organizations’ websites and what they reflect from that of the Web. Table 1.1 provides a summary of this schematic genealogy of the evolution of organizations’ websites, and what they reflect of the very evolutions of the Web and digital communication practices, based on three aspects:
the website: its forms and functions;
the audience: the observed and expected uses;
the organization: strategies and integration into communication practices.
This table is thus used to guide our navigation within the chapter. Each of these periods is illustrated using the website www.Allocine.fr, the evolution of which we will follow using elements archived by web.archive.org. AlloCiné is a company that started as a telephone service and then minitel service for booking movie tickets and has since seen its website, created in 1997, evolve into a true web portal (for e-commerce, etc.) and then into a multi-content platform over the course of its acquisitions.
Table 1.1.The five periods of the Web
Periods
The website
The audience
The organization
The pioneering Web (before 2000)
Static, a few pages, a landing spot, navigation with three clicks, cultural capitalism
Identified by audience measurements, reads information
A place of experimentation and spreading information, having a (domain) name to appear modern, the advertising economy
The citation Web (2000–2005)
Readable for robots, an arrival and bounce place, produces and receives links, linguistic capitalism
Cites, produces relevance and authority for websites
Natural referencing, become a resource on a topic, being visible, being first, capturing attention
Web 2.0 (2005–2010)
Model of the platform, rich interfaces, affinity marketing logic, informational capitalism
Interacts, provides data, participates in the recommendation, develops profiles
Centralizes content, grabs viewers’ attention, provides services, forms a single resource
Social Web (2010–2015)
Attribute in a Web of profiles, showcase site, an object shared with surveillance capitalism
Puts into circulation, creates content, discusses
Promotes the circulation of content, ensures an “information anchor” of their digital territory, diversifies or develops its content
Affective Web (2015 to present)
Experiential space, adapts to audiences, emotional capitalism
Seeks experience, guided by emotions
Causes (re)actions, generates impulses
1.3. The pioneer Web (before 2000)
In 1993, the Internet became “mainstream” (Paloque-Bergès 2015): service providers became more numerous, modems were adopted in homes and it was no longer necessary to have highly advanced technical skills to connect to it. The following year, the W3C1 (World Wide Web Consortium) was created with the objective to develop recommendations to ensure that Web technologies are compatible between themselves. At the same time, the web page and websites were the spaces through which users created their online presence: “I have my page so I exist online, I have my site so I have a presence”. The website is a landing site. The first website of AlloCiné is a simple home page that allows users to reach other pages, including a few photos and movie trailers to download (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1.Web page for the film The Fifth Element on the website www.allocine.fr july 22, 19972.
We arrive at the site through the URL address, for example, and then navigate within it. The first question that organizations then ask themselves is how to bring users to the site and how to make this space better known.
As search engines still operated on the principle of keywords (until the arrival of Google in 1998), and did not offer efficient prioritization, organizations choose to work through classic advertising (TV, radio, etc.): the website became a sign of modernity (Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2.Screenshot of a video advertisement for AlloCiné found on a CD-ROM from Studio CinéLive purchased in the late 1990s3.
When audiences come to the site, the question is as follows: how do they navigate between the few existing pages? The initial conventions regarding the ergonomics of sites were formed, such as the “three clicks” principle, which stressed that all pages within the same site must be accessible in less than three clicks. These conventions were built around a postulate that was later questioned – and was even questioned at the time – but which made it possible to formulate good practices and the evaluation of Web design professions in development at the time:
One of the most essential foundations of the design and development of sites was and still is the imperative to minimize the number of clicks required to complete a task, and to in fact reduce the time required for such task. (Nantel and Berrada 2004)
In this sense, the new version of the AlloCiné site in 1998 provides numerous hypertext links, particularly the latest news, to make them more accessible (Figure 1.3).
Figure 1.3.Home page of the site www.allocine.fr, December 5, 19984.
Relations with the public who browse these sites, including at a minimum the means to identify these sites, to cause them to exist, are done as they still are today, using audience measurements (page views, visits, visitors, geolocation, clickthrough rates, logs [file transfer, error, repository, agent]) or by the first panels of Internet users created by organizations such as Médiamétrie.
These forms of quantification are performative: they define the contours of a typical audience in order to guide the choices of content design or production (Alloing 2020). These measures also go hand in hand with a nascent advertising economy, in which clicks are perceived as intentional interactions that signal the interest of audiences. Various commensuration processes are set up in order to compare sites and establish the price of advertising space. Internet users are seen as audience members, and their clicks as markers of their navigation, becoming a commodity that can be sold to advertisers and emerging agencies (Jouët 2004):
The measured Internet user is a product that is sold to advertisers. Of course, this is a property shared with mass media audience measurements, but these are no longer just target groups who are bought on the advertising or e-commerce market; they are also individual consumers. No type of media has ever made it possible to see so much about its audience without them becoming aware.
This advertising economy is part of what can be called a “cultural capitalism” (Rifkin 2001), where the dream of seeing the Internet and the Web as a means of universal access to culture creates tension with the first attempts to appropriate cultural content from a commercial perspective, in order to attract Internet users to advertising.
In Figure 1.3, the AlloCiné site displays advertising banners (not visible in the screenshot) that lead to other sites. Internet users are then potentially attracted to this site at the time to watch trailers, photos of the films and other content not produced by AlloCiné For organizations, beyond building a presence, the primary interest of websites during this period is to be able to inform the public (news, presentation of products and services, etc.) and have a domain name. Indeed, since the end of the 1990s, the first lawsuits involving domain name usurpation or conflicts between brands of the same name were filed (such as the “Alice versus Alice” lawsuit for obtaining the domain name alice.fr5).
To summarize this first period, we can say that:
websites were a place for advertising experimentation and the spread of corporate information;
the digital territory of organizations is delimited by the domain name, or also by advertisements on other sites or on portals. Its borders were expanded by the placement of advertising banners on other websites;
organizations built a reputation using their sites, based on an idea of modernity (“as seen on the Web”);
the first technical conventions were defined by the “pioneers” and the nascent standards: the mastery of technical development of sites, online publication of informative and cultural content;
the conventions would then be (re)defined by the advertising associations, service providers and the first professionals in the sector (regarding ergonomics).
Intermediaries had already begun to play a central role (advertising agencies, access providers) but would gradually be dethroned by new technological players.
1.4. The citation Web (from 2000 to 2005)
At the beginning of the 2000s, search engines developed and gained importance by establishing a hierarchical order built by the processing of hypertext links and the systematic indexing of large volumes of web pages, following the (hegemonic) model of Google.
At this time, the website became central to structuring a Web where the challenge was to make information visible and available, in response to questions posed by users. The website is no longer exclusively – or almost exclusively – visited by human beings, it is becoming a place that is traversed by many indexing “robots”. The architecture of the sites starts to be designed with the search engines in mind: “How do I make sure that my site meets the standards set in order to be visible?” is a question that organizations or their service providers regularly ask themselves. “Map sites”, promoting the circulation of “robots” from page to page so that they can be indexed, become more widespread, as well as the selection of keywords and HTML tags, or a specific structuring of web pages.
Therefore, editorial and ergonomic choices are no longer dictated solely by technological standards or the objectives of organizations, but by PageRank (algorithm) used by Google: hypertext citations are presented as a means of an “objective” ranking of web pages based on the subjective considerations of users producing links and clicking on them (Brin and Page 1998). According to this logic, specific to the PageRank designers, the public participates in producing relevance and authority by visiting a site, clicking on the links that lead to it, and by producing links between sites.
Here again, a form of performativity emerges, where websites are relevant and authoritative for the public, since the actions and navigation done by the public are considered as marks of relevance.
The conventions of what a website should be, its usefulness, its performance or its interest, are now defined by a single entity: Google.
Web and communication professionals then develop a set of practices, known as referencing, in order to optimize the visibility of websites on the Google search engine. They apply these standards and conventions to do so. In many cases, they also attempt to poach the system it has created to their benefit.
Being the first (or among the first) results to be shown to users is to search engine optimization as “being in the right spot” is for fishing, and the analogy does not end there: fishers can fish using a line (having a single indexed web page), or fish using drift nets, a more industrialized style of production: having 300 pages that monopolize the first 300 responses returned to users for a specific query will guarantee capturing the majority of traffic generated by a keyword. (Boutet and Amor 2010)
These actions put websites at the heart of the so-called attention economy, where the objective is to capture the views and clicks of Internet users on websites, to expand its digital territory as well as its referencing with the exchange of hypertext links between sites, for example, which is becoming a common practice.
The digital territory of organizations is thus delimited by all the elements outside of the website that will attract audiences to it. AdWords advertisements with Google appear in the results of the engine and on partner sites at the same time to promote this search for attention outside the organization’s website.
These contextual ads, built by the processing of keywords entered by Internet users, form part of a linguistic capitalism (Kaplan 2014) by which Google begins to generate profits using the (advertising) redirection it provides to certain sites.
Figure 1.4.DVD page from the website www.allocine.fr on December 14, 2003 (source: www.web.archive.org).
For organizations, the goal is to become a resource on a topic related to their activities by being referenced on one or more key terms that lead to a high audience, and to be visible in the results of the engine, that is to say, to be first in line to capture that attention. The website is evaluated according to its authority, which according to Google’s standards means its popularity and therefore its visibility: “Your brand is not what you say about it, but what Google says about it” became a frequently referenced quote from journalist Chris Anderson at the time (Alloing 2016). The audience arrives and “bounces” (between pages, between sites, between the site and the search engine). The website is no longer a place of arrival but becomes a place of passage and participates in the global circulation of content and information on the Web.
Organizations try to keep their audience on their pages, at a minimum to direct their attention to their content or information. In this way, the AlloCiné site was built as an information portal that offers many subject-specific sections to navigate, as well as specially produced content (such as broadcasts about cinema), and links to partners and services belonging to the company (phone wallpapers, DVD purchases, ticketing service, etc.). In terms of capturing attention, it is interesting to note that the interface of the site has evolved (Figure 1.4). It has become more colorful, with animated images and menus marked with different colors and tabs.
Then, with what some practitioners would dub “Web 2.0” and the features that came with it, the content presented on the pages would become a driver to make audiences interact and encourage them to express their opinions or provide data.
1.5. The Web known as Web 2.0 (from 2005 to 2010)
“Web 2.0” does not refer so much to major technological evolutions as it does to the development of certain ideologies and socioeconomic configurations (Le Deuff 2007):
Web 2.0 uses technologies that are pre-existing and accessible to most of the latest versions of browsers. Some have taken a long time to truly emerge, which is not a new occurrence for ICT (Information and Communications Technology) groups. Web 2.0 is thus based on reliable or rather functional technologies [...].
The model of the platform plays a central role. Digital platforms were designed to be self-sufficient: as they evolved, they came to incorporate the conventions of usage and the features included by their competitors in order to encourage Internet users not to go anywhere:
A “platform” refers to a model of organization of the media, made up of a semio-technical architecture, a set of operators for activating and regulating the activities of users, as well as the content offered and a mechanism for its own valorization. (Bullich and Lafon 2019)
Unlike websites, platforms largely cut themselves off from the rest of the Web to maximize their capture of uses and attention by offering services to different actors (content creators, advertisers, Internet users, etc.) whose interactions they regulate. The platform is a space of “qualculation” that adds values to uses and content in order to regulate and sell it, based on the presuppositions of its designers and statistical data. For example, this may include defining the value of a publication by the evaluations that are made of it (stars, ratings), to direct it to other users through algorithms, or associate an advertisement with it. What favored the appropriation and the development of the platform model during this time was as much the production interfaces (Content Management System – CMS) offered to users, as well as the deployment of high-speed Internet and the appropriation of Web uses.
Still, in this perspective of data capture, practitioners were developing new rich interfaces on websites, with many features (share buttons, comment boxes, etc.). These interfaces are primarily intended to involve users (by commenting, sharing the contents of web pages on platforms, etc.), to entice them to click in order to better target advertising and enhance their databases. The public is no longer seen as merely a source of information that feeds websites, but also as a resource that provides data and produces more elaborate content, as well as an increasingly defined “target” for advertising. Bloggers focus the attention of public relations professionals who seek to diversify the content of websites and offer their audiences more “authentic” visions of the organizations they work for, while making sure to obtain hypertext links to promote SEO. The performance of the sites is evaluated by aggregating the measures of the previous periods (audience, citations, positioning in the results of the search engines). Specific measures appeared for customizing advertising, including the appearance of “display” advertising banners that are intended to be personalized (which insert images and videos, and vary according to users).
The logic of the citation, that of the link, becomes an affinity logic, that of the graph: the personal web page gives way to profiles, navigation from site to site, from platform to platform, is done according to the relationships established by users with each other or with content. The websites of organizations that transform into platforms include, first and foremost, the option to create profiles and blogs, and actively participate in producing content. The AlloCiné site in 2006 was the archetype for these platform sites (Figure 1.5). Its page “Mon AlloCiné” (“My AlloCiné”) offers various features for audiences: creating a profile, a blog, participating in forums and especially criticizing films, which will become its “trademark”, while being a way to produce commensuration to compare movies and participate in the recommendation mechanisms. These algorithmic mechanisms, built on this logic of affinity (with other users and/or content) essentially remain at the core of market platforms today (to buy similar products) as well as informational platforms (to access similar content).
Figure 1.5.“My AlloCiné” page from the website www.allocine.fr, November 16, 20066.
These conventions of the so-called Web 2.0, proposed first by marketing players such as Tim O’reilly, would gradually give way (and integrate) with those of the so-called “social media” or digital “social network” platforms, heralding the rise of a new Web that is sometimes called the “social” Web.
However, the economic models of this so-called Web 2.0 are still in place today:
An attention economy and information capitalism take hold in a sustainable way. The resources that attract attention are co-produced with Internet users, and their recommendation becomes commonplace because its automation is based on the reputation generated by the opinions of the public (ratings, comments, etc.).
Data are seen as a “new black gold” from which it is absolutely necessary to extract value, whose importance no one really knows, but which requires new forms of legal regulations.
