Section 2b: Time & The Website Proper: Context
The last tool we will look at is Google. Specifically we will attempt to situate the website (or pages on the website) in Internet conversations. Websites are linked to, mentioned and often supported or rejected by other websites. The ability to network documents is one of the main benefits of hypertext. As researchers we should take advantage of this unique medium specific ability and attempt to situate documents and websites in conversations.
As I think we will soon see this text is the most comprehensive and time-consuming area of the tutorial. We will be looking at who else references the website we re researching, when it has been mentioned or linked to and how often this has occurred.
After gathering this information you should begin to develop a better understanding of how your website fits into (or perhaps does not) the larger conversations on the issue or subjects your site addresses. To do this we may use a number of search engines. For this exercise you (again, the students are the audience for this exercise) will be using Google, but it is important to note that each search engine has specific advantages and disadvantages in how it catalogs and determines the number of search results.
Go to http://www.google.com and type in the website you wish to find out more information, (such as http://www.campustruth.org/). Type in the website without the ‘http://’ prefix and a search screen will appear with the following options:
As we can see, Google returns over 99 websites that mention the website. These websites are archived by Google according to the time last archived:
Copy and paste any salient Google information about your website on your worksheet in the section provided. Now that you have retrieved your Google information, answer the following questions about your website here:
Worksheet area:
(1) What conversation does the
website fit into? The website has a great deal of criticism
surrounding its racist publications in campus newspapers. There is talk
on many of the websites about how its author remains anonymous.
(2) When did conversations about the site occur?
Most of the controversy surrounding the website occurred in the spring
of 2003. According to web.archive.org has not been updated in the last
two years
Summarizing the importance of contextualizing websites
Contextualizing websites in larger conversations takes full advantage of the research potential inherent in hypertext. By contextualizing texts in larger hyperlinked conversations we are able to make better approximations regarding the influence and audience of texts. One of the advantages of such a research technique is that one is able to begin to see when a text such as campus truth was controversial, who and where was it controversial for, and what was said about the contents of its pages. Combined with the previous four approaches these research strategies allow us to paint complex pictures of texts over time, place and discourse.