Tech Reports

Tech Report kmi-98-03 Abstract

Managing Persistent Discourse: Organizational Goals and Digital Texts
Techreport ID: kmi-98-03
Date: 1998
Author(s): Tamara Sumner, Simeon Yates, Simon Buckingham Shum and Jane Perrone

Prior to digital communications media, texts were primarily judged using hidden but assumed institutional practices (e.g., journal peer review processes, editorial mediation). Increasingly, digital communications media can make these previously invisible discursive practices visible in a persistent medium. Doing so transforms these discourses into texts where they are subject to: (1) a reader's interpretation and judgment and (2) explicit manipulation by writers or publishers seeking to influence this interpretative process. In this article, we focus on managed persistent discourse where explicit practices and roles are adopted within an institution to actively manipulate and transform digitally-preserved discourse, with the aim of influencing readers' interpretative processes in ways that reflect organizational goals. We examine in detail two cases political manifestos in the UK and an interactive journal with on-line peer review to illustrate these new roles and practices, and the different organizational goals the managed discourse is used to support.

Future Internet

Knowledge
Management Multimedia &
Information Systems Narrative
Hypermedia New Media Systems Semantic Web &
Knowledge Services

Future Internet is...

With over a billion users, today's Internet is arguably the most successful human artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integral part of the lives of everyone on the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its fifth decade, the Internet has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility in the face of ever increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces growing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scientific research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilisation of the Internet. Within Japan, USA and Europe major new initiatives have begun in the area.

To succeed the Future Internet will need to address a number of cross-cutting challenges including:

Scalability in the face of peer-to-peer traffic, decentralisation, and increased openness

Trust when government, medical, financial, personal data are increasingly trusted to the cloud, and middleware will increasingly use dynamic service selection