Hello and is there a definition of 'personal home pages'?
I've been lurking on the list a while but have come forward because I am finding it difficult to do something which seemed at first relatively un-problematic - determining what counts as a personal home page. Wherever I draw the line there seem to be sites that fall just outside it that might fit. Is there a commonly-understood definition? I drafted an email with all of my theoretical musings laid out in it but it went on for quite a few lines so rather than clogging all your inboxes I invite people who are interested to come and have a look at my posting about it on my weblog instead http://blog.org/archives/001228.html and contribute either there or here. I hope to meet some of you at the conference incidentally, and if you are interested in knowing more about my project and my thoughts check out my home page and weblog below (especially http://blog.org/archives/cat_academia.html). Thanks for your attention and I hope you are all having good summers! -- David Brake, PhD researcher in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page) and http://blog.org/ (weblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/dealingwithemail/> gives ordering info
I've been lurking on the list a while but have come forward because I am finding it difficult to do something which seemed at first relatively un-problematic - determining what counts as a personal home page. Wherever I draw the line there seem to be sites that fall just outside it that might fit. Is there a commonly-understood definition?
See "Genres and the Web: Is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre?" by Andrew Dillon and Barbara Gushrowski. Available at www.ischool.utexas.edu/ ~adillon/publications/genres_web.pdf and also available as: Dillon, A., & Gushrowski, B. A. (2000). Genres and the Web: Is the Personal Home Page the First Uniquely Digital Genre? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(2), 202-205. Also see "Personal Home Pages on the Web: A Review of Research" by Nicola Döring - available in JCMC at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/issue3/doering.html You might also try this one: Bauman, M. L. (1999). The Evolution of Internet Genres. Computers and Composition, 16(2), 269-282. or this one: Yates, J., & Orlikowski, W. (1992). Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media. Academy of Management Review, 17(2), 299-326. You might also check out week 4 of Susan Herring's syllabus for her Content Analysis for the Web course, available at: http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/web.syll.04.html If you slog through all of this you will have a pretty good grip on personal home pages and 'net genre theory in general... --elijah
Thank you Elijah for some useful references on personal home pages and genre. However, I am still not really the wiser about whether there is an accepted definition of what makes a page a home page and what excludes it from being one.
See "Genres and the Web: Is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre?" by Andrew Dillon and Barbara Gushrowski.
Well they defined home pages as, "belonging to a named individual who was not advertising or selling a business or service and whose information content primarily related to him/herself. Thus we ruled out standardized personal pages from companies and universities listing their staff and faculty but included pages of such people if their personal homepages were distinct from the organizations' standard listings." It's a plausible definition but (as I noted in my blog posting) is that definition really the accepted one? Certainly Nicola Doring's is different, for example - she says commercial pages *are* excluded (as does Dominick, J. (1999) "Who Do You Think You Are? Personal Home Pages and Self-Presentation on the World Wide Web", Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 76 pp. 646-658, who she cites). None of them says why this should be the case. It seems to me that both sets of authors are taking a 'common sense' definition of what a personal home page is but it is telling that they actually end up with differing definitions. I might have to decide to make my own definition or choose one or the other of the definitions provided so far but I would prefer if the choice didn't appear arbitrary or personal! -- David Brake, PhD researcher in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page) and http://blog.org/ (weblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/dealingwithemail/> gives ordering info
It seems to me that both sets of authors are taking a 'common sense' definition of what a personal home page is but it is telling that they actually end up with differing definitions. I might have to decide to make my own definition or choose one or the other of the definitions provided so far but I would prefer if the choice didn't appear arbitrary or personal!
if people didn't have differing and complex definitions, it wouldn't be an interesting problem, now would it? :) elijah
participants (2)
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David Brake -
elijah wright