Analyzing Websites

1Observing the Web through the Lens of Websites

Camille ALLOING

LabFluens, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada

1.1. Introduction

The analysis of websites is a topic that has long interested information and communications scientists, who have addressed it from different angles and with different approaches: semiotics, interface design, public and organizational uses (Proulx 2005) or referencing techniques (Domenget and Michel 2014).

However, defining what a website is remains difficult, as there are many entry keys, but also the object itself: ever since the creation of first HTML pages, though the underlying technologies have evolved little, the forms and purposes of these digital objects have changed according to the trends and expectations of the public or designers (blogs, platforms, showcase sites), their names and their architectures vary. As Pinède points out (2018):

The current hybridization of forms and genres at the center of the interface, the porosity between websites and social media, the possible interweaving of endogenous (content proposed by the speaker) and exogenous elements [...] blur the picture we have of websites, which can and should be understood as a socio-technical device.

In this chapter, we also want to approach the website as a socio-technical device, and more particularly as an attribute of the digital territory of organizations. We use the term “attribute” to mean that which qualifies an object, the essential property of a thing. ...