3. CMC and homepages

CMC or computer-mediated communication is "communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers" (Herring (1996, p.1)). Computer-mediated communication varies depending on which technologies it is based on, and also on its contexts of use (Herring (2002)). There are two technologically-determined types of text-based CMC - 'synchronous' CMC and 'asynchronous' CMC - in which participants interact by using the written word. The former type of CMC is communication that takes place in real time (e.g. chat), whereas the latter type is communication where the coding time and the receiving time need not overlap (e.g. e-mail). Homepages belong to the asynchronous type of communication since the reader and the writer are not logged on at the same time and therefore cannot enter into a dynamic and simultaneous interaction with each other. Even if they were logged on at the same time, they could not interact synchronously, because of the time effort required to produce/modify a web page. Moreover, interaction over the Web is asymmetrical, with homepage authors and readers playing non-reciprocal communicative roles. At the same time, homepages are not simply a form of mass communication, in that readers have the option to respond by sending e-mail to the authors, or by signing the page's 'guest book' (Bates and Lu (1997)). The homepage is therefore a rather unusual form of computer-mediated communication as is the rest of the Web, in that it is "semi-interactive one-to-the-World communication" (Miller (1998, p.1)).

Although the Web and homepages are popular ways of communicating, they have not been studied extensively as interpersonal communication media. According to Wakeford (2000), one reason for this is that web-based communication is less interactive than for example chat, e-mail or discussion groups/lists. Therefore some researchers do not consider web-based communication to be a mode of CMC. Furthermore, when an author or a reader of a web page designs or reads the page, they are engaged in 'asymmetrical activities', in the sense that they interact with a machine. However, we could argue that the designers of the pages interact with readers since they want to mediate web pages with content and with meaning. Each page consists of messages conveyed in various ways. It is then up to readers whether they want to give or leave any feedback as a completion of a dialogical communication (cf. by writing in the guest book on personal homepages).

An important issue has been raised by Soukup (2000), who states that researchers lack methods for analysing meaning and structure which are often conveyed through non-textual means within web-based communication. Homepage communication includes many non-textual elements such as links, images, photos, lay-out, colours and frames which need to be analysed to get an overall view of the communicative nature of this particular CMC mode (cf. Karlsson (2002), Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), Snyder (1998)). The textual elements of personal homepages have also gone largely unanalysed. In this study, the focus is on the actual textual elements of the homepage texts, using well-established methods for analysing texts.