Third lecture in the series "Theories and Interpretation of Interactive Media (P2)"

1. Theories and interpretation
of interactive media 3 /
Vuorovaikutteisen median
teoriat ja tulkinta 3
Frans Mäyrä
Professor of hypermedia,
esp. digital culture and game studies
University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory
frans.mayra@uta.fi

2. Lecture 3:
“Web / networking”:
Theories of Internet and
World Wide Web

3. From a communications channel
into a living environment
• This lecture continues themes discussed last week in
PC/communications lecture
• The emphasis here is on discussions that interpret
hypermedia in terms of a network, rather than a
communications channel
• Network is particular kind of structure, a web of
relations
• ‘Web’ or ‘network’ are very relevant concepts for
understanding current culture and society, since
they characterise many contemporary technologies,
social processes and intellectual developments

4. Network theories
• Multidisciplinary field:
– mathematical network theories (graphs of nodes, edges and
directed/undirected connections)
– theories of technical/communications networks
– network theories in natural sciences (complex systems,
emergent behaviours, thermodynamics, kinetics)
– social network theories (actor network theories, social
network analysis)
– network culture theories (on online subcultures, online art,
collaboration, activism)

5. World Wide Web
• Early experiments: oN-Line System, NLS (Douglas Engelbart),
Project Xanadu (Ted Nelson)
• Tim Berners-Lee proposed a linked information system
(‘mesh’) for CERN in March 1989, and implemented the first
World Wide Web system 1991
• Berners-Lee (1999, 3) has written how WWW evolved from his
believe in power of “arranging ideas in an unconstrained,
weblike way”:
– Suppose all the information stored on computers
everywhere were linked … Suppose I could program my
computer to create a space in which anything could be
linked to anything. (Ibid., 4.) To improve “our Weblike
existence in the world.” (Ibid., 133.)
Sources: Tim Berners-Lee (1989): “Information Management: A Proposal”. Online:
http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/internet/w3c/proposal.html
Berners-Lee & Mark Fischetti (1999): Weaving the Web. New York: HarperCollins.

6. Critique of WWW
• WWW architecture is very simple to implement, anyone can
link to anywhere
• Since the end-node maintainer need not to reciprocate, there
is also ‘link rot’ (changed or removed address does not
automatically update incoming links)
• Basic WWW system remains static, as there is no way the
reader of page can add notes or further links to a document
• Ownership, responsibility and copyright payments are be
difficult to implement or maintain as material is either
completely locked away or completely open (cf. Xanadu)
• Open world of WWW is also “messy”: it relies on multiple
different applications, file formats and (sub)standards

7. Multiple evolutions
• The “browser wars” were focused on additional functions that
each new browser version was able to support
• Later the standards provided by W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium) have lessened the role of browsers
• It is now possible to have dynamic web pages using various
scripts and programming techniques (e.g. AJAX, Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML)
• Rather than web of static pages, WWW starts to function like
interactive software interfaces - a new kind of medium
• Simultaneously, multiple services have been designed to make
use of ‘power of networks’ in a socially and culturally oriented
sense

8. Networks as social change
• Rise of the Internet and WWW as key media coincides
with the emergence of interpretations of society
becoming “networked”
• E.g. Manuel Castells (1996) argued that network is the
new paradigm for modern society, and claimed that more
significance is attached to flows of information than to
flow of power
• Often associated with globalization: work and production
become redistributed in a manner that has powerful
effects on global scale

9. van Dijk: Network Society

10. New media theory and
social theories integrate
• Numerous synthetic attempts have been
produced to describe the role of WWW in
comprehensive manner
• In the following, Burnett & Marshall, Web Theory:
An Introduction (2003) will be mostly used
• Focus on “Internet culture” in areas related to
globalization, political economy, regulation,
communication, identity and aesthetics

11. Web as technology
• The first perspective Burnett and Marshall highlight is one of
technology and secondly that of cybernetics
• In technologically determinist perspective, one can theorise
how Web is a force that will fundamentally transform the
society
• Cybernetics is the ‘science of systems of control and
communication in animals and machines’ (Wiener, Bateson)
• Digitalisation of cultural information allows the associated
social and cultural processes to become involved in
programmed processes within the larger cybernetic, man-
machine system of actions, reactions and feedback

12. Web culture
• Web culture represents a new concentration on
information and its directional flow
• Web culture can produce dislocations of identity
and community
• Web culture facilitates the flow of information for
the objectives of globalisation
• As one part of wider developments in networked IT,
web can also be part of increasing surveillance
(panopticon - a structure for total loss of privacy)

13. Web as communication
• Governed by mode of communication distinct from the
broadcast model, Web is more open to approaches derived
from linguistics and discourse theory
• Communications in Web/Internet include all levels:
interpersonal, group, organisational, mass communication,
with the control variously distributed to participants
• Metaphor of ‘loose web’ to describe the varying degrees of
engagement with the full spectrum of media forms that all fit
somewhere in the complex whole of today’s WWW

14. Webs of identity
• Early cyberculture thinkers such as Sherry Turkle and
Allucquere Rosanne Stone did put much emphasis on fluidity of
identity, as acted out in construction of ‘virtual personas’ in
the Internet
• Radical postmodern theories, that mostly seem to apply within
more extreme forms of Web culture
• A more “mainstream” phenomenon is construction of personal
home pages and how “self” is being represented through them
• Burnett & Marshall argue that rather than in the area of
reception, it is within the production of culture where the
‘loose Web’ will associated with broad-ranging social changes

15. Web aesthetics
• Web aesthetics has distinctive look & feel and an impact on
other media, but it is layered (a way of organising multiple
conventions)
• Collage aesthetics, consisting of text-only lists and menus,
icons and other application elements, combined within
graphically rich, interlinked interfaces
• Web aesthetics is created in a constant tension between
usability (pulling towards simplicity and established
convention) and originality (playful innovation and subversive
experimentation)

16. Web economy
• Web economy radically collapsed in 2000, but has continued to
grow steadily since then
• In 2003, 77 million US persons used a computer at work, 55,5 %
of total US employment*
• In 2006 the global value of online shopping was estimated to
reach US$218 billion, in Finland 3,3 billion euros**
• Two mentalities, that of free information (the logic of public
library, or cultural gift) and commercial activity often appear
to conflict or compete
Sources:* http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ciuaw.nr0.htm
** http://www.euromonitor.com/Online_shopping_sees_fraud_clouds_ahead
http://www.deski.fi/page.php?page_id=11&tiedote_id=5261

17. Web and politics
• In 1990s, Web became associated with ‘new economy’ - the
vision of information society economics as based on information
rather than material production
• Multiple national information infrastructure initiatives were
launched
• Simultaneously ideas of privatisation, free market values and
commodification of information became associated with ‘Internet
economy’
• Still, such key concepts as author, creation, copy, or distribution
become contested or redefined within the context of Web
• E.g. Lawrence Lessig has argued that current copyright laws are
harmful for public good
• Another contested area remains in the area of free speech vs.
regulation (e.g. violence, child pornography, racist or hatred
speech)

18. News and the Web
• Standard evaluation criteria for news in mass media include
factualness, accuracy, completeness, and readability
(McQuail, Media Performance. 1992)
• Burnett & Marshall name as ‘informational news’ the new
mode of news that is typical for the Web:
– transformation of the reader/viewer/listener into the
researcher
– new kind of comfort with a range of multiple sources
– the fluidity of media form
– global community of interests
– cf. personalised, or socially filtered news services (Google
News, Digg.com, del.icio.us social bookmarking service)

19. Web of entertainment
• Examples of entertainment industry’s troubles with
the Internet are particularly visible:
– industry underestimated the impact of digital music
and downloads
– industry perceives mp3 files and filesharing services
as threats rather than opportunities
– sharing music fans are treated as criminals rather
than as early adopters or trendsetters
– cf. a recent major Canadian study which points out
that those who download music from P2P networks
also buy more music CDs than those who do not*
Source:* http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/en/h_ip01456e.html

20. Social Web / Web 2.0
• Much research focused on ‘Semantic Web’
• Simultaneously major popular attention driven to
‘social media’ or ‘Web 2.0’
• New wave of easily accessible, dynamic web sites
which rely on social connections and networking
around some particular interest or function
• “Web 2.0” concept was coined by Tim O’Reilly in
2004
• New services also often associated with
“emergence”

21. Emergence
• Study of complex systems has pointed out how higher level
patterns can arise from multiple simple interactions or events
• Within even a single web service, there might be population
level phenomena which exhibit emergent characteristics
• The Web as a whole can also be understood in terms of “small
world network” where every page is linked to every other page
through small number of hops
• A “power law” is also in effect: small number of Web pages
gets majority of links and visitors, while majority of pages (the
“long tail”) are rarely linked to or visited
Image source: www.wikimedia.org