Web Culture

As mentioned in my previous post, Uses and Gratifications, the web has created a new culture (or even cultures) that is inconsistent with the offline world. Baym (1999) considers four aspects of this:

• New forms of expression
• New forms of identity
• New relationships
• New behavioural norm
  

Here I will discuss the first two.

Identity on the internet is created in a number of ways. Avatars, nicknames and signatures are all tools for people to portray themselves online. They empower people to create an online identity that resembles their authentic selves, free from the restrictions they face offline. Similar to the way people offline buy products that portray certain qualities, people make use of images and quotes online that create specific associations.

People have also developed new ways to express themselves online. The degree of anonymity allows a freedom of expression that doesn’t exist offline. People can say as they please without fear of repercussions. Acronyms have become popular for frequently mentioned phrases (STFU, ROFL, IMHO and RTFM to name but a few) as well as emoticons. The common use of the “f” word is a signal of this freedom.

In my latest IMS seminar, we were asked to mock up an ad which appropriates a popular internet meme (a sort of viral inside joke) or online expression. Here is my first attempt that plays on the ceiling cat meme.

I’ll link to everyone else’s when they have been presented, but in the meantime feel free to comment on my ad or even share some of your own.

Interactive Media Navigation for Marketers

Marketers would benefit a great deal from insight into how people navigate on the internet. In much the same way as they layout real life retail environments, with this knowledge they could optimise sites so that they keep peoples' interest. Hoffman and Novak (1996) suggest that “flow”, originally mentioned by Csikszentmihalyi in 1977, is a key concept for this area.

Flow describes a state of navigation where the user becomes totally involved in what they are doing. They seem cut off from the rest of the world, even losing track of time. This is related to, but different from, stickiness. Stickiness is where users are offered various functions that have the potential to keep them engaged and so they remain on a site. Flow is an enjoyable experience that doesn't hold someone on a site, but that comes about by facilitating the user's needs, creating a seamless environment. They feel good about what they are doing and so they are more likely to return to the same activity.

Hoffman and Novak believe that flow occurs when users have clear goals, receive immediate feedback and encounter a match of skills and challenges above a certain level. Are users more likely to encounter these characteristics when engaged in “goal directed” or “experiential” navigation? Both would be relevant for marketers in terms of aiding purchasing decisions and creating positive perceptions of their brands for example.

Either way, Rettie (2001) has provided some inhibitors to flow that marketers should try to avoid where they can. These include, waiting for downloads, receiving inappropriate search results, being interrupted by advertising, using the web from work (and so being conscious of restrictions etc) and being aware of the cost of using the internet. These seem to make sense in terms of breaking the smooth navigation of relevant content, but do they assume users take on a scopic regime where everything is an obstacle? What is to say that users don't enjoy the variety that web search sometimes throws up? This may be the case particularly when users are engaged in experiential navigation.

Flow does seem like a phenomenon that exists, but I think there is more to navigation than flow provides. What if someone has a busy schedule and simply pops online for a quick browse? They may well react negatively towards brands that entice them into a flow experience that lasts for hours.

Interactive Media?

Innovations in the media landscape led to a range of channels being labelled interactive. The birth of internet was the start but this term is now used to describe a range of media from mobile phones to video games. Brands now see interactivity as the thing to be participating in if you want any level of success. But didn’t traditional media have the capability to be interactive?

This all boils down to your definition of interactivity I guess. I see interactivity as dialogue or action between two or more people. In a similar way to Grunig and Hunt’s two-way symmetrical mode of communication, I think interactivity has to involve mutual negotiation and real evidence that both parties are listening. This can be achieved in traditional media. You can write a letter to journalists and editors of newspapers for example, and if it raises an important point it could be published and even commented upon. You may say that this is a rather awkward, convoluted and slow method of interactivity, but the capability is there.

The internet does facilitate interactivity, but it isn’t always used by brands who claim they are embracing it for these very qualities. Just because it’s online doesn’t make it interactive, so should the label used to describe these new media be changed? I don’t think they even need a label really...