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Context Analysis
- the website survey technique
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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.
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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  |
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A post-modern community web hosting service, also from George McNamara
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