Under constriction: Colonization and synthetic institutionalization of Web space

Abstract

Drawing on a study of 106 personal homepages, this paper presents a theoretical model of how citizens’ potentials as Web publishers are being compromised by the leadership of institutional discourses. Adapting Norman Fairclough’s (1989) model of synthetic personalization, I propose an analogous process of synthetic institutionalization, in which personal homepage publishers affect institutional poses. Institutional poses, with their commercial and bureaucratic discourses, enable homepage publishers to construct seemingly viable public positions and to maintain seemingly viable public relations. In an environment that hosts both citizen and institutional classes, synthetic institutionalization is theorized to undermine the potential for citizens’ distinctive Web agency. However, such a problematic environment, according to Fairclough, can also stimulate creatively restructured discourses, discourses which have indeed been emerging from among the Web’s citizenry.