Context Analysis
- the website survey technique
 

I have created a total of 67 web pages. There is an index of these, and a start page. The pages can be accessed sequentially by clicking NEXT at the top right corner of each page.

My main technique has been to cut, paste and link information from the websites of numerous representative organisations and businesses. I have taken 'snapshots' of typical web pages from the chosen organisations during the week of 4-11th May, 2002, and there is a list of the organisations surveyed.

Most of the web pages consists of one or more of these snapshots. I have tried to keep each page non-scrolling, but in some instances I have added further text from the original site if it has been cut off by the snapshot process. I have provided a link to each of the original web pages. Some pages are my own precis of the technical changes in certain areas in the last 100 years, for example I summarise some of the technical changes in preserving and processing food.
1. The Context of Food Policy
    Website Survey Technique
Survey Start Page
      Index
      Organisation List
Summary of the Survey
The Big Picture
      History of Food
Context Analysis
2. Government and Policy
3. Policy Analysis
4. In-depth analysis of sub-topics
5. The Dispositive (Triangulation)
6. Summary
7. Conclusions
I have chosen the snapshots to give a fair idea of the operations of each organisation - for example, Unilever are a major food production and processing company. They have hundreds of pages covering their products and brands, investor information, job vacancies, etc., and I have selected 3 extracts from their site, one about their "Environment and Society" approach, one about their "Sustainability Initiatives", and a short extract about their production of frozen peas. This gives a good idea of the scale of their operations, and of "how they present themselves" - the 'semiosis' of their style, layout, use of colours and fonts.

The study is unusual as it has a flat structure - it communicates the way the organisations present themselves, but it is difficult to evaluate their size and importance from their internet site, and this is a property of the internet medium. The National Farmers Union was an example of this - they are influential, but their site was quite small and not very informative (it is more 'normal' now). The opposite is also true - there are organisations with glossy and complex sites which are in fact 'one-man bands'.
I am offering my services as a "Discourse and Text analysis Specialist" using my
 
A post-modern community web hosting service, also from George McNamara