Burnett and Marshall talk about how the web is often modeled after other forms of media. For example, some pages have almost a newspaper look with headlines and columns, other pages have banners and scrolling info much like news or sports channels, etc. They say the web has drawn some of it's structure from tv and other sources, much like "Building from radio, television has developed a pattern of presentation of flow..." (Burnett and Marshall, 87).
In looking at Yahoo, I see hints of many different types of media. For starters, I see a sort of newspaperlike structure. The first thing I notice when I see their page is the interesting news section right in the center of the page. This is much like the front page of a newspaper showing the big news of the day, except in this case it could be something important or it could just be something weird and interesting but relatively useless information. Another thing I notice about this section is that it scrolls, showing more than one “important” or interesting subject at once kind of like the ticker on the bottom of a news channel or the ticker on the bottom of the screen during a sports game showing the current scores in other games.
Burnett and Marshall talk about genres, saying “To make the claim that there are specific genres on the Web is to link our analysis to how television, music, or film is divided up into certain expectations” (90). I see this represented in the column on the left side of the Yahoo page. This column has links to other sites listed by particular subjects or genres.
They also talk about interactivity as an important aspect of a website. Yahoo’s website is extremely interactive, much more so than any other form of media could possibly be. Nearly everything on the site is clickable and will bring you to another site or another portion of the home site. This emphasizes the non linear structure of the internet that Burnett and Marshall talk about. The internet is truly a user decided experience unlike any other form of media. In a newspaper, you can read it in a different order rather than front to back, but you will still get the same information out of it. When watching tv, you really don’t have a choice what you see, unless you change the channel, but then you are still at the mercy of what is currently being shown. On the internet, you have complete control over where you go and what you see.
Burnett, Robert, and David Marshall. Web Theory: an introduction. 1st. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. 81-104. eBook.
Question: Is what you say about interactivity the same as what the authors say? i think you two might be discussing two different items here.
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