Week 9 Board Discussions Pt2

Author: Sky Croeser
Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009 9:30:21 PM WST
Subject: Official Reading Thread: Döring, ‘Personal home pages on the Web’

This reading was a review of the literature on personal home pages, and one of its main arguments was that we need to expand our concept of a home page. There are a few questions below to kick off
discussion. You don’t need to answer them all: just pick those that are most interesting to you, and
feel free to raise other issues and ask new questions:

* Has our notion of a ‘personal home page’ changed since this article was written? Personally, my impression is that fewer people have stand-alone home pages these days, and more have a web of connected pages (mostly on different SNSs). Do you agree? How would you define a ‘personal home page’, and how important do you think they are today?
* Are Döring’s recommendations on how to find/sample personal homepages still relevant (web directories, web rings, link lists)?
* Do you have a homepage? what is it for?
* What do you think of Döring’s argument that: “No other medium seems more exactly suited than the personal home page to fulfilling the present-day demands of identity work on the charged field of differentiation on the one hand and construction of coherence and meaning on the other [...] Personal home page construction promotes the systematic answering of the identity-critical “Who am I?” question and supports the internalization of the individual answers.”
* One study cited by Döring found that users often use their home page as a way to store useful links, and refer to it often. Who is the ‘audience’ for home pages? Are home pages more useful to their creators than others?
* How relevant are the findings of this essay today? What did you find most useful? What do you think needs updating?
* Döring argues that “a collage-like process of publication is to be read as meaningful self-construction in the opinion of postmodern identity theorists”. How much are our current online identities dependent on the repurposing of other online content?
* Döring notes that gender representations are reproduced in online colour schemes chosen for personal home pages, among other factors. How important is gender in our representation of our selves online? Is this changing?
* Do you agree with Döring’s division of homepages into ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’ categories? What are the differences between each?
* Do you agree with Döring that we need to expand our definition of what counts as a personal home page and recognise that “explicit self-presentation is not the only and quite often not even the most important personal home page function”

As well as issues raised by this reading specifically, there are some
issues that you may want to reflect on in relation to all of the
readings. These include:

* Research methodology: was the study concerned conducted in such a way
that you have faith in its results? Can you see any ways in which the
results might have been biased? Was the research carried out in an
ethical way?

* Did you agree with the interpretation of the study’s results?
* Is the study still relevant today? Are there aspects of it that need to be updated?

This was a very interesting paper, at times a time warp. I remember late 90’s everyone was creating a website on Geocities or their ISP’s server. It was a big selling point back in dialup days of getting 5M web hosting. I cannot say that I have seen personal websites today like those back in the late 90’s, nevertheless, if I was to guess at what those sites had evolved into I would, Blogs, Myspace and other social networking sites.

I do not recall seeing a webring around for a very long time, webrings were useful in circling the surfers around. When I used to go looking for personal pages I would head to the ISP and browse through their link list of users and their websites. It was often a good way to waste a few hours.

I do not currently have a personal website, I have a company one that I run. I do remember that one that I made late 90’s and hosted on Chariot Internet, it was just some links to my favourite sites, pictures and a lot of animated gifs. That does make me wonder if I made the website for myself or for others, most likely a mixture. A nice place to safely store my links (since Windows 95 was not known for stability) and favourite images, also a place I can show friends to in a way ‘show off’ my computer skills.

I found this paper hard to read, a lot of information gets lost in all the numbers and referencing.

 

Author: Sky Croeser
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 3:35:12 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official Reading Thread: Döring, ‘Personal home pages on the Web’

If you’re having trouble getting through a reading, it can sometimes be helpful to read the introduction and conclusion first and then go back to the body of the text. Of course, some articles are just more difficult reading than others than others.

Returning to our discussions about Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0, do you think that the shift away from the older style of webpages signals a fundamental shift in how the Internet works, or is it just a cosmetic change?

 

I think there is a shift to some degree, I am seeing that more and more people want to be able to manage their own websites. Content Management Systems are all the rage for that. For example I have a client who gets me to install WordPress and he syndicates over many sites to generate sales and most importantly SE results.

On the other hand today I got a new client who wanted a traditional 5 page static website, therefore, I would say the Web is shifting towards a participatory environment but tradition still plays a role.

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