Description of the Websites: Semiotic and Content Analysis
Figure 1: Screenshot of Automates Intelligents
Automates Intelligents is a website that disseminates information and contains articles on Science and Society in general, and on Artificial Intelligence in particular. This website is closely related to another one, Admiroutes Sciences, techniques et démocratie, which was originally launched by public institutions in order to favour the introduction of ICT in the French administration. Admiroutes promotes and hosts the Automates Intelligents site as well as two publications related to it (the collection of books Automates Intelligents and the free periodical journal La Revue. Robotique). Finally, it also presents an electronic journal, Europa++ Une revue en coopération avec Paneurope France, in which Automates Intelligents collaborates. The relationship existing among these websites responds to the following criteria: (i) their reflective nature and their specific objectives (i.e., democracy and new technologies in Admiroutes; science and society in Automates Intelligents; and European scientific politics in Europa++) and, (ii) their shared ideology, based upon knowledge dissemination and the use of the ICT (e.g., the Internet) to serve democracy and cultural and scientific development by means of working interactively with readers and contributors.
Our description focuses on the Automates Intelligents homepage, which has been regularly visited in order to report possible variations. The webpage shown in Figure 1 corresponds to a visit on March 8th 2007. It is important to mention that multimodality and interactivity have increased notably over the period we have been regularly accessing it. The uniform use of the colour blue and the similar logos contribute to the connection between Admiroutes and Automates Intelligents. The compass rose logo identifying Admiroutes evokes the action of navigating and is reminiscent of the slogan of the Larousse Encyclopaedia je sème à tout vent. The compass rose logo is a generic link in Automates Intelligents, whose logo is a humanoid-automat. Admiroutes also employs a mirror as a logo and the Automates Intelligents website presents itself as a mirror-like site on the Admiroutes site: «Le site miroir d'Automates Intelligents (site de travail et d'archivage)». This reference to the work and organisation process can be due to the fact that the Automates Intelligents website integrates two different systems for knowledge popularisation. On the one hand, it offers pre-publication of articles, which allows visitors to read works in progress. On the other hand, it includes the electronic journal Automates Intelligents, whose archives are available through Admiroutes.
The webpages that make up the Automates Intelligents site are framed with blue borders, where the generic links – present on all the pages – can be found. On the left, one can find the website logo, the main navigation menu and the compass rose logo. This frame of the website also includes Francophone external links as well as external links in other languages, which are classified by subject and accessible through the link Liens utiles. The menu includes different types of links. In the top and bottom parts we find internal generic links (i.e., Aide, Plan du site, Abbonement, Nous contacter) and a dynamic link (i.e., with dynamic text) that allows users to access the journals of Automates Intelligents. In the bottom part, there are links to access the presentation of the team and of the editorial board, the partenaire list as well as information on subscription and contact. Repetitions of links in the top and bottom part of the website may be due to the fact that in order to explore the website in detail, users need to scroll up or down. The right frame offers: (i) search tools within the website itself and in the Web; (ii) a link to the VUibert publishing company to buy books from the Automates Intelligents collection; (iii) a link to a webpage that provides information about how to submit manuscripts; (iv) a link about automates in the mass media (i.e., press, radio and television) that offers audio and video; and (v) finally, an internal link to Paul Baquiast’s and Christophe Jacquemin’s publishing company, Pourquoi ce site?
The central frame of the homepage is divided into two sections. The central section includes an area with advertisements related to the site and links to two blogs – Le Monde and PhiloScience. The second section of the central frame shows current topics on a white background and with images in colour. It is actually a summary which is complemented with links enabling users to keep on reading about any of the topics offered. Finally, the right central area offers a chronological list of news with date and title, whose texts function as links to access a specific piece of news.
The high number of external and internal links allows the user to access both the website contents and information related to other sites. They also offer the possibility to visit original articles, whose reviews are also available. This dynamism paves the way for the multilingualism and intergenerecity of the website.
Figure 2: Screenshot of Robot Pals
Robot Pals is the webpage for one of the shows of Scientific American Frontiers, an American television programme whose aim is to inform the general public about advances in new technologies and discoveries in science and medicine. The programme, hosted by Alan Alda, is broadcast by PBS in the U.S. and the shows can be viewed online. Most programmes include about three short documentaries, and these are reflected in the online page for each programme. In the Robot Pals show the three documentaries are Ripley, Leonardo de Lovable and Robonaut.
Most pages for the shows of Scientific American Frontiers have a similar frameset. The page includes a top banner giving access to different sections of PBS (present on all the pages of the PBS site) and a left-hand navigation menu for Scientific American Frontiers (present on all the pages of the programme). The central part shows the title of the programme (in this case Robot Pals) and, below it, a frame which occurs on all the pages of the show Robot Pals, consisting of links to different parts of the page (three graphic links, which lead to abstracts of the three documentaries, and three textual links: Watch online, Weblinks and more and Teaching guide). Below this menu frame there are four other frames, which allow the user to see a clear separation between different types of content and to navigate more easily. In the middle of the page we find two frames: the top one presents a brief summary of the programme and the bottom one (with the title “web features”) consists of a picture of the host (Alan Alda) with two links to two different text documents. On the right of the page there are two frames, one over the other: the top frame includes three links to the abstract of the three parts of the show, and the bottom frame is a link to the video online (no matter where the user clicks, he/she is directed to the video) with a background picture and two messages prompting the user to view the video. The difference in colour in the frames is also quite useful to separate contents and help navigation.
This is a multimodal page, which includes text, images and links to videos. Some images act as background to textual links, while others are links themselves. This is the case of the three images of the robots, each leading to the abstract of a different part of the document. These images, in full colour, are highlighted with regard to the other images of the text, which only use different shades of one colour (blue or grey). The multimodality of the page enables the reader to explore it following different paths (the three image links lead to the same content as the three links in the segments frame: Ripley, Leonardo de Lovable and Robonaut), thus supporting different learning styles.
As already noted, the frameset of the page helps navigation in two ways: contents are very clearly separated through frames and the frameset is repetitive, as shown in most of the other pages of the Scientific American Frontiers shows. All the pages are built out of the same modules, which both makes the work of the page developer easier and helps the reader who accesses different pages of Scientific American Frontiers.
As regards functionality, the pages enable the user to do different things: read documents on social robots and artificial intelligence (through the links in the “web features” frame and also through Weblinks and more, which leads the user to a page with external links on the topic), read a summary of the different parts of the show (through the graphic links or the links in the “segments” frame), view the video, explore educational material (Teaching guide), search within the PBS site (Programs A-Z, TV-schedules, Search PBS) and within Scientific American Frontiers pages, contact with the producers of “Scientific American Frontiers” and even buy different products at the PBS home.
The possibility for the user to do different things is closely related to the multigenericity of the site. Although the Robot Pals site includes the video of the TV show, users are not presented with a TV programme, but instead with a document with echoes of different genres. The site is similar to a DVD, where users can choose scenes dealing with a single topic. However, unlike DVDs, this is not a closed document, from which users cannot go anywhere else. The site also includes two documents that could be considered popular science papers (A conversation with Cynthia Breazeal and Intelligent by Design). The echoes of popular science are reinforced by the Scientific American Frontiers logo, which leads the reader to think of the well-known Scientific American magazine. The links TV-schedule, Previous shows, Future shows, Special features serve a similar purpose to that of TV magazines. Therefore, the site combines semiotic keys from different media and different genres.
Discussion
Our results confirm the following features of websites: multimodality, multisemiotics, multigenericity, transgenericity, diversity of intended audience, and non-linearity of content.
The analysis shows two different aspects of multimodality: as a semiotic-cognitive tool and as a feature of contents. First, regarding multimodality as a semiotic-cognitive tool, we found at least two functions: (i) as a navigating resource, i.e. written text, icons and images are used as anchors to link to other documents; and (ii) as a semiotic key of the organisation and design of the website, particularly on the first page: colours and distribution of frames, icons and images. Second, multimodality is a feature of website texts because of the multiple modes (oral, visual, written text) in which information is codified and presented.
Multisemiotics results from the fact that meanings are presented in multiple modes and thus they become the consequence of the intersection of different semiotic keys. We might be able to construct meaning that makes sense through multiple possible understandings taken from available multimodal information. Therefore, multiliteracies mean the ability to wread all these media and modes.
In addition to this semiotic and modal complexity, our results confirm multigenericity and transgenericity. We regard multigenericity as:
As for transgenericity, we regard it as an affordance of the navigation mode. In hypertextual writing, transgenericity involves the possibility of activating a link in a genre which leads to a different genre. A requirement for transgenericity is that the text producer should establish a coherence relation between the source and target genre, which can be reconstructed by a wreader in his/her traversal. The possibility to traverse from one genre to another brings about the blurring of genre boundaries. Hypertext creates coherence paths between genres, which allow the wreader to establish multiple coherence relationships between the texts, documents and segments related through links. For instance, on the Alan Alda page (in the Robot Pals site) users can move from a biographical text to some interactive texts (e.g. reading interviews and writing an e-mail). In the case of Robopolis in Automates Intelligents, users have the possibility of reading an informative text (i.e., Biblionet) and suddenly, with just one click, find themselves exploring a shopping catalogue (i.e., Robopolis).
The results of the heuristic description of the sites also enable us to put forward some hypotheses regarding two different models of hypertextual writing: the modular fractal model, as in Robot Pals, and the mirror model, as in Automates Intelligents. The remaining sections in this paper will help us to confirm or refute these hypotheses.