Approaches to Analysing the Web Text

Abstract

This paper challenges the dominance of concepts of hypertextuality as the foundation for the analysis of web texts. Instead it argues that web texts cannot be understood without reference to their specific contexts of production and consumption. As part of the construction of an alternative to existing analytical approaches to the web text contemporary practice in web design is surveyed, as are its relations with the culture of particular groups of producers. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework allied to the field of British media and cultural studies, this paper suggests how the analysis of the web site might be approached in terms of its status as an emergent media/cultural form. It discusses how such forms might be understood in terms of the shared social conventions which inflect their production. It argues that web sites can neither be analysed in terms of generic hypertext or as a homogeneous genre and that rather the formation of groupings of sites in line with the ideologies, values and preoccupations of their producers require concrete analysis together with further research into specific practices of 'reading' web texts.