My research is concerned with World Wide Web (WWW) communication. The Web is a relatively new locale for communication which is growing in popularity among users. In Canada and Ukraine, a considerable percentage of the population relies on this medium daily: 82% (Statistics Canada, 2011) and 46.3% (Bigmir Net, 2011) respectively. Connection to the WWW grants users access to the latest news, social networks, forums, educational materials, and other information which users can access quickly regardless of their location. The important advantage of the Web for organizations lies in its capacity to disseminate information promptly among countless users with the cost of launching and maintaining a website being minimal. Realizing these advantages, the commercial sector perceived the Web as a marketing tool that could be used to reach consumers (Maynard & Tian, 2004) and has been rapidly augmenting its presence on the Web ever since. In contrast, the non-profit sector has been slow in adopting the technology and comparatively little research has been done in the area (e.g. Kanayama, 2003; Palmer, 2004; Cadman, 2009; McLeish, 2011), particularly in connection with WWW use by religious organizations (e.g. Strickland, 2004; Nelson, 2008). No empirical studies are currently available for the use of the WWW by religious organizations in Canada or Ukraine. My research addresses this gap by exploring religious organization websites in the Canadian and Ukrainian contexts.

 

The New Media perspective of my research plays the central role in examining communicative potentials of websites rather than the technical aspect. This focus is important because the goal of many modern websites is to communicate effectively with users. Since WWW use has been studied most extensively within Web architecture and Web usability, my study relies on these two fields besides the field of New Media per se. Review of the existing empirical studies allowed me to identify three aspects of websites contributing to their overall communicative potential: design, content, and navigation (Martinec & Van Leeuwen, 2009; Knox, 2009; Palmer, 2004; Nelson, 2008). However, the available studies tend to focus exclusively on only one of these aspects.

 

DETAILS  AND  PREVIOUS  ANALYSIS

My research goes a step further and focuses on developing an integral semantic model for the analysis of all three aspects simultaneously. The analysis is unified under the overarching framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Design, content, and navigation are examined within the framework in connection with three linguistic metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This perspective permits viewing websites as texts, albeit complex in structure and multimodal in nature.

 

In my study, I employ three methodologies: 1) New Media Design (Martinec & Van Leeuwen, 2009); 2) Involvement theory (Chovanec, 2003); and 3) Web Architecture (Palmer, 2004) and Web Usability (Nelson, 2008). These methodologies are improved, modified and integrated in accordance with my research objectives. Namely, it is suggested that diagrammatic shapes in the New Media Design methodology should be substituted for a table with a two-dimensional system of coordinates (Figure 1) that allows accurately locating the position of units on the page in relation to both the page and to other units which is important because the position of a unit (e.g. top vs. bottom and left vs. right) may affect the communicative potential of the page on which it is situated. Relying on the peculiarities of reading paths on the Web as well as the multimodal character of modern websites, I have proposed that the Involvement framework should be organized into three categories: linguistic, structural, and audio-visual (Figure 2) which corresponds better to analysis of websites as compared to linear texts. Finally, in my model, I substitute the prioritized download speeds of Web architecture and Web usability approaches for a more balanced approach that acknowledges the role of a download speed, but also considers tools facilitating navigation, properties making navigation more engaging on the site, as well as options promoting communicative exchanges with website users.                                                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                           Figure 2: Involvement phenomenon in WWW article headlines

 

       Figure 1: A non-linear model with a two-dimensional system of coordinates

 

In my previous analysis, this model has been successfully applied to the websites of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in Canada and in Ukraine) and Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church websites as WWW use in this context renders communication a major concern. The research findings suggested that the communicative potentials of the websites under analysis were restricted with respect to all three linguistic metafunctions preventing them from communicating effectively with youth and other users whom the Churches seek to engage. The way in which the Orthodox websites are organized shows that quite a lot of effort is being applied to production of information, but not enough effort is expended to delivery of the information to users efficiently and effectively or to building dialogic relationships.

 

DIRECTIONS  FOR  FURTHER  RESEARCH

There are three directions to continue my research: 1) the reception perspective; 2) expanding the research to other non-profit and educational websites; and 3) automation of the model. First, in SFL, texts (websites) are viewed as a product of the communicative process (Fairclough, 1996), but the communicative process also includes two other phases: production and consumption/interpretation. To date, my research has been focusing mainly on the first two phases: product and production. I analyzed websites and conducted interviews with their chief editors; however, it would also be beneficial to add a reception inquiry in order to get a better understanding of the complete communicative process involving the websites. Second, Canada has many non-profit and educational institutions and I would like to study other websites of non-profit organisations and universities. Finally, because the quantity of websites on the Web is constantly growing, it would be beneficial to automate my model with the help of a computer. This should allow more efficient determination of website communicative potentials regardless of their quantity, as well as providing the ability to repair issues related to design, content, and navigation quicker and more effectively.

 

THEORETICAL  AND  PRACTICAL  VALUE

The theoretical value of my research is in developing an integral semantic model for the analysis of communicative potentials of websites. An important feature of this model is the possibility to compare any particular website aspect (design, content, navigation) or whole websites with a high degree of precision which is possible due to the quantitative expression of the results obtained with the help of my model. With the help of this model websites can be viewed as texts albeit complex in structure and multimodal in nature. Importantly, my model can also be used for practical purposes, including enhancement of certain features of non-profit and educational websites thereby improving communication with individual users and communities via the Web. Thus, the model has both theoretical and practical values and can be used to further advance the ongoing research on New Media as well as to increase communicative potentials of websites.

 

REFERENCES

Bigmir Net (2011). Statistics. Ukrainian Web usage, January 2011. Retrieved February 20, 2011 from http://index.bigmir.net/

Burch, B.C. (2004). Exploring Internet use among the growing Churches of the Holston conference of the united methodist Church. PhD Dissertation,

          Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY.

Cadman, D. L. (2009). Web 2.0 for non-profit organizations: how online communities and collaborations are reshaping non-profit organizations.

          Charleston, S.C.: Advantage.

Chovanec, J. (2003). The mixing of modes as a means of resolving the tension between involvement and detachment in news headlines. Sbornik Praci filozoficke

          Fakulty Brnenske Univerzity, 29(9), 51-66.

Fairclough, N. (1996). Language and power (10th ed.). New York: Longman.

Kanayama T. (2003). Strategic Web use by nonprofit organizations in Appalachian Ohio: The influence of resource dependency and institutional expectations.

          PhD Dissertation, School of Telecommunication and the College of Communication, Ohio University, Athens, OH.

Knox, J. S. (2009). Multimodal discourse on online newspaper home pages: A social-semiotic perspective. PhD dissertation, University of Sydney,

         Department of Linguistics, NSW, Australia.

Martinec, R., & Leeuwen, van T. (2009). The language of New media design: theory and practice. NY: Routledge.

Maynard, M., & Tian, Y. (2004). Between global and glocal: Content analysis of the Chinese Web sites of the 100 top global brands. Public Relations

         Review, 30(3), 285-291.

McLeish, B. (2011). Successful marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations: winning in the age of the elusive donor. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Nelson, J.Y. (2008). The content and role of Web sites in public relations of religious congregations. PhD dissertation, the Graduate Studies Office, University of

          Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.

Palmer, E. K. (2004). An investigation of the Web sites of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. PhD dissertation, School of Computer and

         Information Sciences, Nova Southeastern University, Lakeland, FL.

Statistics Canada (2011). Canadian internet use survey. Retrieved January 15, 2013 from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/111012/dq111012a-eng.htm

Strickland, G.E. (2004). The Internet and the Church: Online activity and perceptions of its significance in a local congregation. PhD dissertation,

         Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ.