Webiography: has its time come?

This idea for a blog entry came about because of the UK Grocer magazine carried an article on 29th November this year mentioning "webnography" and suggesting that some fmcg companies were now starting to employ semioticians to analyse the whole signifier structure surrounding a company/brand/product.

This word and also, "webography" are creeping up on the zeitgeist radar. See the Google Zeitgeist entry for webography.

Webography is defined on Wikipedia as:
"...a list of websites that pertain to a given topic. A webography is much like a bibliography, but is limited to a collection of online resources rather than books and academic journals. Research has been conducted comparing them to traditional bibliographies."

Whilst Webnography is defined not by Wikipedia as they do not have a listing (!) but a useful review is suggested by FBI Innovation where they state:
"Webnography, which is also known as Online ethnography or Virtual ethnography, is a new development in the field of Ethnography. Online ethnography is an online research method which extends the traditional notions of field and ethnographic study from the observation of co-located, face-to-face interactions, to technologically mediated interactions in online networks and communities.

In doing so it challenges the traditional concept of a field site as a localized space and moves it into the direction of online or computer-mediated communications and interactions.

In Webnography researchers study e.g. online communal forms, including blogs, web-rings, chat, SMS, gamespaces, bulletin boards, and mailing lists."

I wonder if these are not too narrow a definition and actually it may worth considering this research in terms of a biography, especially when you consider the utility to marketeers of gathering information on the life and times of a company, brand or product. What is the biography of your brand? What is, was, the social capital of the brand and business? Where is the potential to add value in the near and medium term?

Through new media can the reporting of webnography research actually deliver something I would term a webiography? Something to deliver the authenticity of the experience of your brand/company/product; something more deeply embedded in the global everyday? Maybe in a few years time webiography might actually move toward just "biography of the business" as the new media becomes the everyday. All part and parcel of the growth and development of the web and organizations.

Deduction, Induction and Abduction

Following on from the previous posts it is worth noting that some of the issues I struggle with over imagery are discussed in the realms of semiotics/semiology. A great collection of papers on Marketing and Semiotics was published in 1987 under the editorship of Jean Umiker-Sebeok. In a paper by Morris Holbrook he discusses the how, quoting Burnham "..."the artist realises that a standardized product is essentially a piece of language containing syntagm and system" so that "the intention is to tranform common objects into art" via a process wherein "the artist's genius is in recognising the totemised environment of brand products and mass media."

Is that where the "artistic" need arises for photographers to capture the essences of scenes? To give expression to what is seen AND felt?


He goes on to say that, "The understanding of such consumption-based artistic nuances involves a type of logic that Pierce [a American founding father of semiotics) called abduction. ....As described by Peirce, abduction follows a different logical process from the familiar deduction or induction. Briefly, given
1) a rule ( a law of nature or general truth drawn from experience),
2) a case (a presumption or hypothesis) , and
3) a result ( an observed fact)........

deduction draws an inference from 1) & 2) to 3)
induction from 2) & 3) to 1)
&
abduction from 1) & 3) to 2)

he then goes on to give Pierce's example about a bag of white beans [!]

Deduction
Rule: All the beans from this bag are white
Case: These beans are from this bag
Therefore Result: These beans are white

Induction
Case: These beans are from this bag
Result: These beans are white
Therefore Rule: All the beans from this bag are white

Abduction
Rule: All the beans from this bag are white
Result: These beans are white
Therefore Case These beans are from this bag

Marketing & Semiotics Jean Umiker-Sebeok 1987 pp 98-99

"the artist's genius is in recognising the totemised environment of brand products and mass media." Again is that where irreverent comedy gets its kicks?