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Web 2,0 from the ground up: defining the participatory web in its own terms

by Matthew Allen

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Slides, with notes, for my presentation at the 2011 AoIR conference Internet Research 12.0: Participation and Performance.

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We have, it appears, come through the period of Web 2.0. Like all good historians, for that is really my discipline, I lag behind the curve, too busy looking backwards to realise the world has moved on. I suspect I am the only person discussing Web 2.0 quite so explicitly at this conference, compared to a few years ago when that was all there was. Have we so quickly passed by on this state of affairs? Is it, in the words of one French journalist reporting the sudden enthusiasm for (yes, it was inevitable) Web 3.0, a case of: “Le Web 2.0 est-il mort?”Web 2.0 might be dead, as a business term or a object of scholarly critique or as a frame of reference for app development (which, of course, has migrated dramatically to the mobile environment not least because that place can mean real money). But it is more than alive in the words which have come, within the time of Web 2.0, to make sense of the online experience, that create a dominant discourse for the business of being connected - what one should expect and do – for the everyday user. This discourse of web 2.0 is the subject of my paper.It also concerns a forgotten aspect of the participatory web: that a major part of the ‘participation’ was in the development of many thousands of sites, services and applications by a wide array of participants. So this paper is also about code and how its presumed features and functions come to create a meaningful web.
However, what I was left with, in both cases, was a nagging sense of doubt about what exactly we might mean by Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was / is an empty slogan or perhaps an indeterminate meme. I had defined Web 2.0 in some work by reading critically how others had attempted to define it (in terms variously technological, political and cultural); I had also explored the possibility of a strict ontology classifying applications in various ways: this proved impossible because every application seems to have qualities across categories and indeed had affordances for other uses not easily categorisable.In other words, web 2.0 is not easily defined (despite or perhaps through O’Reilly’s efforts). While recognising that attempts to generate definitions are caught up in the textual uncertainty which leads to asking ‘what does it mean?’ in the first place, I wanted to try and so turned to a ‘source’ – the text which is used by Web 2.0 applications to promote themselves, to shout out ‘pick me, use me, I am what you need’.
Web 2.0, from the ground up, in other words.
As I have argued elsewhere, Web 2.0 was an intervention into the political economy of the Internet in the early 2000s to emphasise the primacy of code and information processing over media production and distribution in determining the likely future of the Internet. So the meaning of Web 2.0 lies in the processes and goals of code. Web 2.0 is essentially the consumerisation of code, and its application – through networks – to a whole series of activities previously untouched by it. While that movement is not periodised (no end and start dates), it emerges as a ‘moment’ in the history of the information society because of the peculiar circumstances which led us to give versions to something which is, essentially, without versions.
So, essentially, I am doing a classic piece of textual analysis to recover the implicit structures of meaning for a particular phenomenon. I am using the language by which the phenomenon is promoted and publicised. I do not assume that the experience, either individually or collectively. of using Web 2.0 is the same as its linguistic formation. However the interpretation of that experience is heavily determined by the terms available to users – terms which they get, by and large, from the language which comes attached to their first and continuing use of particular applications. Thus I can turn to that promotional language for some insights into this process.
Leximancer is, of course, a box of magic tricks played on language. I can discuss it in more detail later. Briefly though, the settings were optimised, with some iteration, to best suit the particular nature of the corpus – 1000s of blocks of small length, often with only a few sentences, and not complex sentences. One term (website) was excluded because it was so common and yet was largely redundant (ie “this website...”).
The data used for this project was drawn from the listings of so-called Web 2.0 applications and services on a primary website (feedmyapp.com) which describes itself as “your daily dose of Web 2.0” and a secondary site (go2web20.net) which claims to be “one of the biggest web2.0 directories out there”. The first site lists (currently) over 13,000 applications; the latter around 3,000. The sites serve to market these applications. Feedmyapp in particular allows free listing of content you provide; but also offers optimisation and advertising services. However, in each case, the text which will be used is not a review but is either written by, or summarised from, the developers / marketers of each application.The dataset consists of the descriptive marketing text from 12,819 individual applications totalling 755,000 words. 11,469 unique applications from Feedmyapp were complemented by 1350 from Go2Web20. This data set produces the corpus which is then analysed by LeximancerI resisted the temptation to see it as some kind of temporal exercise. While I have date data I wanted to maximise the size of the sample and treat it not as some kind of record of ongoing development but a ‘snapshot’ of how multiple individuals, in developing their applications (successful or not, big or small), ‘drank’ the O’Reilly Kool-aid and made something real within the meme.
This presentation will present the data generated from the automated analysis of the dataset by Leximancer focusing on three kinds of visual representations – a concept map (selecting the more highly relevant 26 concepts), some abstracted thematic representations, and a look at how all 93 concepts cluster together.
So to begin with, here is a very high-level view where Leximancer groups into two the leading two, almost equally weighty and significant concepts – use and share. These concepts are 100% and 98% relevant to the entire corpus or, in other words, they appear most often, with the greatest connections to the other key concepts. They are the central nodes of two clusters of concepts which best describe the corpus, even though users (the 5th most relevant significant term) is most central to all concepts (it lies broadly in the centre of the venn diagram formed by the overlapping thematic circles.However, we should be careful not to read too much into this abstraction which, while useful for grasping quickly a most important fact, does not provide much detailed analysis.Out of interest:SHARE relates most closely to: others (37%), friends (31%), photos (30%), discover (28%), files (26%) and upload (24%)USE relates most closely to: technology (26%), interface (25%), easy (25%), browser (18%), simple (16%), tool (15%)
I don’t assert that this proves the fusion of technology and society: I am simply observing that, as per expectations, the discourse of Web 2.0 links very social outcomes (to the right) with the tool and technology oriented ‘uses’ (to the left). As we will see in a moment, there is an important group of central concepts that lie between these two alternatives.
Here is the concept map, showing the 26 most-weighted concepts, down to a relevance score of 33% (including blog– it is just under 33%, in a group of 3 terms at 32%). There will be more discussion of all 93 concepts later in the presentation. The edges map connections between these concepts. The colours indicate relevance (red-shifted are more relevant). Position indicates relational significance (ie close nodes are conceptually linked based on co-occurrence statistics). Node size indicates weight (not only frequency but importance judged relative to others).
The central close grouping of concepts helps to reveal a key component of Web 2.0: that it allows users to createcontent. Notice the way this cluster of concepts stands between the left-hand part of the map, with a greater emphasis on tool-related concepts and ideas (especially in the left lower corner) and the deeply human and social aspects to the right. Users, while not the most weighted concept, are crucial for the way ‘uses’ of the web, for sharing, occur. We are, clearly, at the centre of the web, ,marrying technical potential with outcomes.
To the top left appears a key cluster which sums up one of the critical and continuing effects of Web 2.0: its use is free and easy. This discursive strategy is to be expected in promotional texts and may not match experience: (perhaps individual tools are not as easy as might be claimed; perhaps there are only limited features for free services). However Web 2.0 is defined significantly by its efforts to establish for users that the software which is encoded with websites and offered as a Web 2.0 service or application is fundamentally oriented towards consumption: ease of use, low or no cost, enabling the widespread adoption of the possibilities and procedures by which ‘code’ manages information.
We see in the third group the key term share which is the most weighty concept (closely followed by use). Users principally share specific forms of content – blog, photos, video (and music and news are lower ranked concepts in this cluster as well) and they do so mainly for, through, and with friends. Note how social and network act as a gateway, conceptually, between users and share. I discuss social network in more detail later.
twitter appears as a concept alone. It is the only named concept to appear in the top 26. google and facebook also appear but with much less weight. And Microsoft and Yahoo do not appear as key concepts at all, rarely appearing in the text. twitter lies towards the outside – it is not central to the discourse of Web 2.0 but the frequency of its appearance, and the number of web applications relating to twitter tells us that this service has dominated the choice of focus for ‘symbiotic’ applications (e.g. tools that work with other web 2.0 services). Note the way twitter is conceptually related to the content which might be shared through it rather than the sharing itself.
In this quadrant, the final point of interest to be discussed, we see a range of less important concepts that are more to do with the technical and informational aspects of the internet outcomes distanced from the social networks and communities within which it lives. You can see that web service and online stand as a key central group defining the relationship between such technical matters as manage and tools (with terms sich as system, software, project and data which have lower relevance scores) and also information. I will have more to say about search in a moment.
Absent from the concepts, at any level of relevance, were some terms that might – in the early 2000s – have been thought to clearly mark out applications and activities online. Similarly, there were no significant references to old media nor to that other great source of ‘new’ media – games. While these words did occur within the corpus analysed, they were insufficiently frequent and relevant (through co-occurrence) to be extracted. Not surprisingly, Web 2.0 describes itself in ways most unlike academic commentary.
Having given an overview of the map, I want to focus on four particular aspects of what it reveals that, I think, make much clearer the operation of Web 2.0 discourse as a means for shaping our experience of networked computing. In two cases, these examples speak to the change that might be considered to have taken place (or that is promoted to occur) because of Web 2.0
Here again is the concept map, showing the 26 most significant terms.
Let’s focus on social and networks
Social networking is confirmed as a dominant term in the discourse of the web, with this activity standing between use of the web and outcomes such as sharing and community. While Facebook might have be considered as the premier social networking service, it seems that social networking has come to describe far more than specific applications or affordances and has now entered contemporary popular discourse as one of those originally quite scholarly ideas (like class, or psychoanalysis) but now used far and wide in a much looser fashion.
Back to the concept map, showing the 26 most significant terms.
And the focus now rests on community and people. Note how community is less weighty than people, nor as relevant.
Virtual community is not central to the discourse of the web; in Web 2.0 communities resume an important role with a more physical and located tenor (close to world, place, live) while online communities remain important. However online has now achieved a different significance, more as a modality of interaction than a distinct place of its own.
The map again
Highlight
While still significant, search is not central to Web 2.0, in part because it is for accessing information not embedded within a social network or friendship. Search is distant, comparatively, from many of the things we might search for (blogs, photos) or their social context (friends, people)
To share is the key activity which links specific forms of content such as blogs, photos, video; we share through and for friends. However creating content is not as closely connected with these forms as sharing.
This concept cloud groups related terms by colour, locating them in relation to the central term in each cluster: the size of the word demonstrates its significance in lexical terms.
Sharing would appear to engage users in a relationship with both friends and others, conducted through the types of content that is shared and which they see as their favourite.
Web 2.0 enables users to create a variety of content.
What they use is, largely, web-based and, as a result, free, easy and simple.
But this is not just about the world online. It is about the way the web – through computer-mediated social networks – brings people together, connected, in communities and with clear outcomes - acquiring things, having fun – in place.
I want to avoid the grand conclusion to what is, in truth, a very partial account of what we might understand Web 2.0 to be, or indeed to have been. People’s individual experiences of the using the Internet are never going to be aligned with what appears from my textual analysis: while creating and sharing content might be important, many users will never or rarely engage in that activity. Chat is and remains significant. Moreover, while mobile and phone do appear as lesser-ranked concepts, not closely integrated with the primary concerns of Web 2.0, clearly they are becoming much more significant and, indeed , ‘app’ development may well be moving rapidly into the new spaces created by mobile devices and the associated business models of the app store and similar.However, my analysis of the text corpus which represents the way Web 2.0 developers (themselves an amalgam of coders, designers, and entrepreneurs) promoted their services does provide two important insights. First, it shows how the idea of Web 2.0 was interpreted and developed into something which, in many different ways, creates the framework for the experience of using the Internet. The many thousands of individual interpretations, when taken as a single text, gives I think good evidence for determining the ‘change’ which Web 2.0 claims to have been.Second, my analysis helps us to understand how ‘code’ has become part of the everyday life of Internet use, compared with the earlier times; indeed Web 2.0 might best be seen as the popularisaton of code, expressed through the classic formations of consumer culture. Within Web 2.0, online technologies, which are free and easy to use, create the possibilities for users to achieve meaningful outcomes, through information processing and exchange, but understood as the basis for human interactions. In doing so, the discourse of Web 2.0, found in these fragments of text, builds a preferred identity for ‘the user’ who is central to this activity. Just as texts produce preferred or dominant subject positions which, when occupied by readers, enable the text to make sense and fulfil the desires for coherence of writing and reading, so too does ‘Web 2.0’ create a preferred kind of Internet user – one who does share, who does network, who does embrace the ‘ease’ with which this can be done. This discourse in operation will engage individuals in a way that positions them as more or less central, better or worse at occupying this position, and thus has shaped the way people experience as agents online, empowered by the Web through submission to this dominant discourse.
My contact details: for examples of using Web 2.0 applications in teaching and learning visit knowledgenetworklearning.net

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Tama Leaver, Lecturer at Curtin University of Technology 1 year ago

Web 2,0 from the ground up: defining the participatory web in its own terms Presentation Transcript

web 2.0 from the Ground up
Defining the participatory web in its own terms
Matthew AllenInternet Studies, Curtin University
BACKground
ORIGINS
Research into Web 2.0 as a key term within broader discourses of networked computing and the Internet, exploring history and politics
Teaching & learning development to exploit ‘Web 2.0’ for innovations in online education, emphasising cognitive engineering and collaborative public work
Key research Question
What are the key ideas by which Web 2.0 becomes meaningful in everyday practice
Or perhaps more precisely:
From the textual materials which create the popular language of ‘Web 2.0’, can we recover the central concepts which, in effect, tell us what Web 2.0 is and does?
Assumptions: Topical
Web 2.0 is about code and, especially, code as popularised, promoted and made ‘available’ as something to use in everyday life
Web 2.0, whatever its origins and future, describes a particular period of technology development and adoption that reshapes how we think the Internet
Assumptions: Theoretical
Discourse lies, in Foucault’s terms, ‘between words and things’, (perhaps remediated here to be the language between code and its use, making that code sensible).
Promotional language is the primary means by which innovation or novelty are explained and understood: contemporary advanced societies are saturated with promotion and it helps us make sense of the world.
METHOD
Take a significantly large sample of the words used to describe Web 2.0 in the promotion of code
Subject them to content analysis using Leximancer, which maps the key concepts in a corpus of text using sophisticated mathematics to show relations between concepts, significance, and the overall ‘terrain of meaning’.
The Data set
Where did the data come from?
What is the dataset?
GENERATED DATA
Central themes encompassing nodes(high-level thematic abstractions)
Concept map with nodes and edges(26 concepts with 33%+ relevance)
Concept cloud(all 93 concepts, mapped into clusters)
Thematic ABSTRACTION
Central themes (100% abstraction)
Central themes (100% abstraction)
Technology
Society
Concept Map
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
26 most-weighted concepts
The following terms, which might have some expected importance, do not appear at all within the 93 identified concepts :
- chat, forums, messaging, conversation
- collaboration, teamwork, crowds
- television, radio, newspapers, movies
- games
- marketing, advertising, selling, buying
Exploring the concept map
social + networks
community
search
share
Exploring concept map (I)
Exploring concept map (I)
Exploring concept map (I)
social and network are so closely co-occurring that they are almost mapped into a single node and form a dyadic relationship. The relative likelihood of co-occurrence is 57% social + network and 48% network + social (the highest scores of any two concepts).
Exploring concept map (II)
Exploring concept map (II)
Exploring concept map (II)
community and people appear together, but distant from the central business of online use, creation, sharing and so on; note that friends is quite distinct; note that virtual does not appear at all. The most likely relationship is with members (18%), then local (12%), though online also relates (9%).
Exploring concept map (III)
Exploring concept map (III)
Exploring concept map (III)
search and information are related and occupy terrain with concepts associated with technical outcomes (management, projects, time), and informational needs (products, help, best); note the importance of weight – while ‘engine’ is very highly related to search, it is not especially significant and search has a much wider set of connections.
Exploring concept map (IV)
Exploring concept map (IV)
Exploring concept map (III)
Share is principally related to others (37%) and friends (31%). Sharing is about taking the content which exists already and sharing it, as much as creating content itself.
CONCEPT CLOUD
93 concepts as cloud
93 concepts as cloud
93 concepts as cloud
share
post
video
blog
photos
music
friends
others
favorite
93 concepts as cloud
93 concepts as cloud
userscreate
list
content
media
allows
easily
lets
anyone
93 concepts as cloud
93 concepts as cloud
use
web
application
browser
Interface
free
easy
simple
including features
93 concepts as cloud
93 concepts as cloud
peoplecommunity
connect
discover
live
fun
things
worldlife
place
CONCLUSION
Avoiding the Grand conclusion
Analysis shows how the idea of Web 2.0 was given substance in the hands of 1000s of individual developers
Code becomes popular: and with it emerges a ‘preferred user’ position in comparison with which an individual might experience their online agency
Thank you
http://netcrit.nethttp://knowledgenetworklearning.net@netcritm.allen@curtin.edu.au

Web 2,0 from the ground up: defining the participatory web in its own terms

by Matthew Allen

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Web 2,0 from the ground up: defining the participatory web in its own terms Presentation Transcript