Page 31 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

B2B

See also: Meaning, Subjectivity, Text/textualanalysis

Further reading: Barthes (1977); Caughie (1981); Foucault (1984)

B2B

Term meaning ‘business-to-business’. Not exactly a concept, but an
important element of the current architecture of interactive
communication, especially in multimedia applications. ‘Horizontal’
b2b commerce has proven more important than ‘vertical’ b2c
(business-to-consumer) interactions thus far in the newinteractive
economy. In fact b2b is nowan identifiable business sector in its own
right, sustaining a vibrant culture of Internet sites and portals
devoted to assisting, exploiting and expanding this sector (see, for
example, http://www.communityb2b.com/ or http://www.b2btoday.com/)
Among the reasons why b2b matured more rapidly than the
potentially much larger-scale b2c are:

. businesses invested in interactive technologies to a much higher
degree than individuals, resulting in a widespread availability of fast,
networked systems in many businesses large and small;
. the ‘neweconomy’ applications of IT spawned many micro-
businesses and SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) able to
compete with established dinosaur corporations online – the base of
business itself broadened (at least temporarily);
. digital and broadband infrastructure was slow to roll out in most
countries, making household connection to the Internet both slow
and expensive;
. retail consumers proved reluctant to divulge their personal and
credit details online, and may also have had qualms about the extent
to which their actions could be tracked and exploited.

A 2002 search for b2b on Google yielded 2.2 million sites.

BARDIC FUNCTION

A comparative concept, proposing a similarity between the social role
of television and that of the bardic order in traditional Celtic societies.
The concept was suggested by Fiske and Hartley (1978) to emphasise
the active and productive signifying work of television. The idea is

16