Questioning the Web 2.0 Discourse: Social Roles, Production, Values, and the Case of the Human Rights Portal

Abstract

This article interrogates the notion of Web 2.0, understanding it through three related conceptual lenses: (1) as a set of social relations, (2) as a mode of production, and (3) as a set of values. These conceptual framings help in understanding the discursive, technological, and social forces that are at play in Web 2.0 architectures. Based on research during a two-year period, the second part of this article applies these lenses to the case of the Human Rights Portal, a Web portal designed to leverage the participatory knowledge production ethos of Web 2.0 for human rights organizations. This section discusses the design process and the ways in which the discourse of Web 2.0 as parsed through the three lenses described informed this process.

Keywords:

• human rights
• politics of Web 2.0
• Web 2.0

Notes

1. See Ray Oldenburg's (1999) “The great good place: Cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community.”

2. It is worth noting that acknowledging the categorical difference in Web 2.0 does not imply accepting the rhetorical flourish found in much of its discourse. It is understood that many other changes in organizational and design approaches on the web were received with equal enthusiasm. The early writings of Howard Rhinegold (1993), Theodore Nelson (1987), and Starr Hiltz and Murray Turroff (1978)show that the computerization and the Internet were seen as sea changes, whereas the more nuanced forces at play in their implementation and use remained unexplored.

3. Some have pointed out that Web 2.0 technologies and practices themselves are not necessarily new (Scholz 2008); however, the point here is that a categorical shift in the scale of user participation and ease of use for the technology involved has taken place. Others have noted that these environments are not places where equality rules, both in the weight given to contributions and on who contributes (Ortega 2009; Shirky 2008).

4. In this article's interpretation of technology (the information architectures and technological affordances), it is worth noting that a soft determinism is assumed, where technology cannot wholly determine the nature of interaction, nor can the roles imagined by designers entirely be technologically determined. However, technology exerts an influence nonetheless, and the longer technological structures remain, the more they become part of the “background” of experience and expectations, and the harder they are to discern and change (Winner, 1985).

5. I see danah boyd’s(2006) description of Fakesters or Myspace Whores as examples of these unplanned roles rooted in user identity.

6. The darting eyeballs, buzzing keyboards, clicking cameras of production/consumption are in this context, for example, ad-based revenue systems.

7. Here I purposefully have used the term networking as opposed to “network.” Recently, David Beer (2008) has aptly pointed out that the using term “network” as espoused by boyd and Ellison (2007) leads to an overgeneralization of the nature of SNS and their role within the bevy of Web 2.0 technologies currently available to Internet users. By sticking with “networking” we can distinguish SNS from other Web 2.0 platforms, and acknowledge the “network” and “social” are part of the equation of Web 2.0, but that the field is more nuanced.

8. For more on the idea of the intelligence of the crowd see Daren Brabham's (2008) work on crowdsourcing.