9-29: Genres: Insert Witty Line Here
Genres help to classify similar things under a category. In his article, Gunther Kress insinuates the web is full of genres. In order to understand how each web-page can fall into a genre, I will try...and probably poorly...to dissect a page according to the Kress' definition of genre.
Let us look at e-bay for a moment. Obviously, people know e-bay as an online auction site, in more general terms a shopping site. The user views links that take the to various items. These items are set-up either as an auction of "buy-it-now" function. This could be reported to the user a kind of stock similar to a retail store. Each link is just a place on the shelf. Thus, one would start to think of this site as a retail place. However, looking deeper into the definition of genre, I must analyze what is implied by the interaction between users.
The level of interaction can be high or low. Similar to the classifieds in a newspaper, you could call someone up and ask about a particular item or just buy it hoping for the best. On e-bay, e-mail serves as the main form of communication. So, the buyer could contact the seller for questions. Again, this displays e-bay as a commercial business.
Next, we look at the social world represented by the site. One could argue e-bay is a sort of economic Darwinism. People who have the most money could set an insanely high max bid to win an item. However, in a lot of cases, it finds a niche for people looking for rare and unusual items. It is an auction house/retail store for everybody. No longer do people have to go to conventions to find Ren and Stimpy comic-books. Now you could sit at home and search. So, e-bay fits into a broad genre of shopping but is more of a flea-market meets auction house. There's a lot of junk but also a lot of useful things.
Let us look at e-bay for a moment. Obviously, people know e-bay as an online auction site, in more general terms a shopping site. The user views links that take the to various items. These items are set-up either as an auction of "buy-it-now" function. This could be reported to the user a kind of stock similar to a retail store. Each link is just a place on the shelf. Thus, one would start to think of this site as a retail place. However, looking deeper into the definition of genre, I must analyze what is implied by the interaction between users.
The level of interaction can be high or low. Similar to the classifieds in a newspaper, you could call someone up and ask about a particular item or just buy it hoping for the best. On e-bay, e-mail serves as the main form of communication. So, the buyer could contact the seller for questions. Again, this displays e-bay as a commercial business.
Next, we look at the social world represented by the site. One could argue e-bay is a sort of economic Darwinism. People who have the most money could set an insanely high max bid to win an item. However, in a lot of cases, it finds a niche for people looking for rare and unusual items. It is an auction house/retail store for everybody. No longer do people have to go to conventions to find Ren and Stimpy comic-books. Now you could sit at home and search. So, e-bay fits into a broad genre of shopping but is more of a flea-market meets auction house. There's a lot of junk but also a lot of useful things.
posted by Red Head Matt at 11:53 AM
1 Comments:
The *fleamarket auction house* synthesis is great.
You have a good start on thinking of social relationships in terms of reader/author, and the larger social context. Your discussion raised questions for me about what it means that ebay is a multi-authored text -- so the relationships are formalized (by an overall convention) but composed by many different authors who stay within the convention (what is required by the site eg contact info, object for sale etc) but who meet these requirements differently. So are there other sites which fall into that "genre" ?
And what about relationships in the content (the elements which display what is for sale, allow users to connect, etc)?
Now for the witty line - how about:
Genres: An anagram of 'greens'.
Or is it a little too random to count as witty?
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