I’ve been reading Burn and Parker’s book, Analysing Media Texts, where there is one chapter on analysing internet sites. An interesting term was read in this chapter, “hypertextual depth”, a phrase I’ve not read or heard before.

Jay Lemke (2002) distinguishes between two notions of text here – the semiotic text, or sequence of signs presented to the reader; and the meaning-text, which is the reader’s interpreted movement through this sequence. In hypertext, Lemke argues, the semiotic text presents more or less explicit trajectories; while the interpretation of meaning by the reader proceeds as traversals. These notions are related to Kress and van Leeuwen’s idea of reading path – that particularly in the context of visual design, there is a double structure in which the text offers implied routes around the design, while the reader engages with this to design their own reading (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996).

[pp. 31-32, bold text replaces italicised text in original]

I’m thinking about hypertext in blogs, and what it does to the relationship between writer, text and reader. So many of us argue, to the point it is general consensus, common sense, that hypertext increases the autonomy of the reader. While the book confines the reader to traverse the text, left to right (or right-left, up-down, let’s not be eurocentric), hypertext frees the reader to leave the page to another place, to return at their leisure.

We also argue that hypertext constructs the roads on which we travel the internet. My Google Analytics account tells me that most readers who visit this site get here by a link from another site (including google.com). Without four little letters, href, we would not have google.com or technorati.com to give us our readership.

But while it is the reader who traverses the information superhighway, it is the writer who sets the path. So my question is: when entire side-bars, headers are filled with links to www.somewhereelsebuthere.net, and it’s hard to find a post without one link to, why do bloggers link?

  • Do we intend to make our pages a portal to the online world of our own readership? If so, do we place links in order to make an impression (or expression) of ourselves? Do we know that, do we encourage that, or are we discouraged from, placing a link to another site, or another blog, will say something about who we are as bloggers?
  • Do we link out of a call to some sort of etiquette? Is it wrong to post abotu an issue, mention a book or a person’s name, without a link to a relevant site? If so, do we, can we, expect some sort of return?
  • Are there any other reasons?
  • How do we expect readers will use links? If we let readers go, can we expect them back?

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