This group exercise asks you to get in close to a small site, first describing it, and then analyzing it using the ideas of the visitor's role, drawing how the message uses web elements and your reading paths through the site. Your aim is to come to understand how this site works rhetorically, which may enlighten us on how other sites work rhetorically.

You'll work in groups and will present what you discover in class.

Refer to ReadingPathsAreIndeterminate and Links

Method

Build up a description of the message and the visitor's role - sketch it out - by moving through the site and being aware of what you're being asked to do, directed towards, and how you're proceeding. Describe and analyze both the pages you visit, and your movement through the site.

Start at first page, look it over, note what's there: Ask, what's the role of the visitor right now? What is the visitor being asked to do next? Go where? Do what? In what terms?

You're trying to explain how the site works - not so much what it is as how it works: how it places visitors in the roles it does, how it constructs the character of the rhetor, by what means, and, finally, to what ends?

Take signals from elements on the site.

• top-level and subsequent navigational terms
  • especially the category terms: these are links in their function of creating sense, meaningful groups.
• prose: consider the layout on the page (crayons or 81/2 X 11, or something else) and the text itself. consider titles of articles or essays.
• images: images are used as content? as decoration? as complimentary to the text? where are they placed? what are they of, and in what manner or style?
• links: placement in the text and as general navigation

Be systematic: Make a map

Draw a map of the site, and try to draw a map of your reading path(s) through it. This is story-boarding in reverse.

Be sensitive

If you're disoriented, consider if the visitor is being cast in that position, and how. And consider time, movement, and change. A role is built up over time, by moving through the site. You're seeking to build up a description and analysis over time, using a balcony view, and neutral terms.

Patterns become messages

Watch for patterns, regularities, that are built up through the site. As you work, you'll probably find that you construct a sense of the author of the site, Bonnie. Keep in mind you're less interested in who Bonnie is and more interested in the message and how it works, and the visitor's relation to the message. (In the same way, we were less interested in the reality of BSU and more interested in the way the BSU pages characterized the Prospective Student.)

grrl: http://www.grrl.com/

• an online personal magazine. not a blog because the essays are not posted by chronology
• puzzling (idiosyncratic?) navigational terms. What role does that place the visitor in? What does the visitor do next?
• the entry page: Characterize the top level text. Consider what's listed, what's not, what the visitor is told, what not, who the visitor is being cast as: that is, who wouldn't find the entry page puzzling?
• the sub-pages: what's there, how linked, to what.
• the essays: what topics are covered, use of links, ethos of the message: who is the reader/visitor being cast as now?
  • what is this?
  • how is a visitor meant to read it?
  • how does text and reading define the visitor's role/ relationship with the message?
• links: what connections are being established by the links. look for patterns.
• how images are used: where, how placed in relation to the text, and how they work to define the visitor's role and position.

• Each group will need to explain disclaimers on some of the essays:

and

What does the presence (the necessity?) of these disclaimers tell us about the relationship between the message and the visitor?

Finally, address an interpretive or evaluative issue for this site. In your description and analysis, you've addressed how the site places visitors in the role it does, and by what means. Now, in a final statement, explain: To what ends? What's the significance of what you've discovered?

• GroupA
• GroupB
• GroupC
• GroupD
• GroupE

A List Apart: http://www.alistapart.com/

• not a blog - still a magazine because posted as articles
• the text / visitor relation is not like grrl: stating their purpose and position up front. this is not set up to explore but to do what?
• can still see the concerns in the r nav bar: topics -
• openly cast as For People Who Make Websites - so analyze this to get a sense of
• what this role is in particular with respect to site: does site cast you as novice? colleague? drinking buddy
• how it's established and used
• what visitors are given to play the role (that is, how it persuades visitor to take that role)

Go to the level of the list of articles - look for patterns in the titles, see if there's something there -

• in how titled
• in interests - articles about "clients" means the visitor is cast as ? what
• look to the full list of article to see how you are cast and what you are given to play that role
• in what's missing

Categories: Exercise