Page 182 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

New Media Sportscapes: Branding and the Internet • 171

Permanence and Ephemerality

Another characteristic of the Internet as a medium is the way that it seems both
ephemeral and permanent at the same time. The Web has a sense of permanence
because, unlike older media, such as TV or theatre, it needs to exist in permanent
form for it to be transmitted. But a Web site may destroy its content when it updates.
Schneider and Foot (2004: 115) suggested that an analogy would be ‘as if each day’s
newspaper was printed on the same piece of paper, obliterating yesterday’s news in
order to produce today’s’.
This means that Web content also seems ephemeral because it cannot be expected
to last. Updating can happen all the time. For example, the results of a football match
or other sport events can be posted in real time. Every time the Web page refreshes,
its content can change. This ephemeral quality can lead users to feel frustration when
they come upon outdated information on a Web site, for example, if an announce-
ment for an upcoming event remains after it has occurred. In this, Schneider and
Foot (2004) have observed that the Web has something in common with other ‘per-
formance media’ like TV, radio or theatre. Once Web content is presented, it needs to
be reconstructed to preserve it. By contrast, nothing needs to be done to archive older

media like film, print or sound recordings. This is a feature that can cause problems
for a researcher—a Web site visited one day may have changed radically by the next.
The analysis of Web sites, therefore, presents new challenges to researchers. For

example, we may need to download all their constituent files and reassemble them,
rather than simply copying the URL of a Web site that may change.

Unboundedness

Another feature of the Internet that distinguishes it from previous media is its un-
boundedness. While Williams (1974) originally proposed the notion of flow to char-

acterise the experience of viewing television, where one programme merges into an
evening’s viewing, this concept can be seen to have even greater resonance for the
Web. Where does a Web site begin and end? By following links, users can travel
infinitely across the Internet. If a team’s official Web site has a link on a sport news

site, then by following that link, a user’s journey makes both sites inextricably inter-
textually connected. This characteristic also presents a challenge for a researcher
wishing to analyse a Web site. As a result, Schneider and Foot (2004: 118) preferred
to think of Web sites as taking part in a Websphere. They proposed the term Web-
sphere analysis for the analysis of ‘communicative actions between web producers
and users over time’. They conceptualised a Websphere as ‘not simply a collection of

websites, but as a hyperlinked set of dynamically-defined digital resources that span
multiple websites and are deemed relevant, or related, to a central theme or “object” ’
(Schneider and Foot 2004: 118).