Website hierarchy and the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design: A systemic functional hypermedia discourse analysis perspective
Emilia Djonov | University of Wollongong, Australia
Website hierarchy is a central principle for organizing information in websites with implications for user orientation on the Web. Employing websites for children as case studies, this paper proposes a conceptualization of website hierarchy developed by adapting a tool from systemic functional linguistics to the analysis of websites. This new conceptualization draws on the strengths and reconciles the differences of existing ones in order to reflect the fluidity of websites as hypermedia texts on the WWW and the role that the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design plays in revealing a website's hierarchical organization and thereby orienting users within it.
Keywords: user orientation, hypermedia discourse, social semiotics, information architecture, website hierarchy, systemic functional theory, website usability, children's websites
Published online: 16 October 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.15.2.07djo
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.15.2.07djo
Cited by
Cited by 28 other publications
Adami, Elisabetta
2015. What’s in a click? A social semiotic framework for the multimodal analysis of website interactivity.
Visual Communication 14:2 ► pp. 133 ff. 
Al-Samarraie, Hosam, Hassan Selim, Timothy Teo & Fahed Zaqout
2017. Isolation and distinctiveness in the design of e-learning systems influence user preferences.
Interactive Learning Environments 25:4 ► pp. 452 ff.
Alvin, Leong Ping
2016. The thematic structure of homepages: An exploratory systemic-functional account.
Semiotica 2016:210 ► pp. 105 ff.
Bui, Khanh Nguyen & Ruth Harman
2019.
In Handbook of Research on Assessment Practices and Pedagogical Models for Immigrant Students [Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design, ],
► pp. 18 ff.
Chan, Eveline & Len Unsworth
2011. Image–language interaction in online reading environments: challenges for students’ reading comprehension.
The Australian Educational Researcher 38:2 ► pp. 181 ff.
Connors, Priscilla
2013. Delivery Style Moderates Study Habits in an Online Nutrition Class.
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 45:2 ► pp. 171 ff.
Deepak B.J., Usha M. Rodrigues & Padma Rani
2020. Mediamorphosis of Regional Newspapers: Utilization of the Internet’s Potential by Kannada Media.
Asia Pacific Media Educator 30:1 ► pp. 59 ff.
Diani, Giuliana & Annalisa Sezzi
2020. Scientific websites for children: Nurturing children’s scientific literacy through the conflation of multiple semiotic resources.
Journal of Visual Literacy 39:3-4 ► pp. 273 ff.
Djonov, Emilia
2012.
In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Fawzy, Rania Magdi
2020. Let’s Play News!: An SFL Approach to Aesthetic Interactivity of Gamified News.
Games and Culture ► pp. 155541202092004 ff.
Hall, David & John Knox
2009. Issues in the education of TESOL teachers by distance education.
Distance Education 30:1 ► pp. 63 ff.
Harman, Ruth
2018.
In Bilingual Learners and Social Equity [Educational Linguistics, 33],
► pp. 1 ff.
Kim, So Yoon
2020. College disability support offices as advertisements: A multimodal discourse analysis.
Discourse Studies ► pp. 146144562096692 ff.
Koenig, Nils & Christopher Schlaegel
2014. Effects of design characteristics on corporate blog acceptance.
Management Research Review 37:4 ► pp. 409 ff.
Król, Karol & Dariusz Zdonek
2020. Aggregated Indices in Website Quality Assessment.
Future Internet 12:4 ► pp. 72 ff.
McMurtrie, Robert J.
2020. Aesthetics in the high-rise apartment complex: a social semiotic perspective.
Social Semiotics 30:1 ► pp. 65 ff.
Mirović, Ivana, Vesna Bogdanović & Vesna Bulatović
2019.
In Science Communication on the Internet [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 308],
► pp. 153 ff.
Muhammad, Abdul Hafeez, Ansar Siddique, Ahmed E. Youssef, Kashif Saleem, Basit Shahzad, Adnan Akram & Al-Batool Saleh Al-Thnian
2020. A Hierarchical Model to Evaluate the Quality of Web-Based E-Learning Systems.
Sustainability 12:10 ► pp. 4071 ff.
Pascual, Daniel, Pilar Mur-Dueñas & Rosa Lorés
2020. Looking into international research groups’ digital discursive practices: Criteria and methodological steps taken towards the compilation of the EUROPRO digital corpus.
Research in Corpus Linguistics 8:2 ► pp. 87 ff.
Pauwels, Luc
2012. A Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Websites as Cultural Expressions.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17:3 ► pp. 247 ff.
Poulsen, Søren Vigild, Gunhild Kvåle & Theo van Leeuwen
2018. Special issue: Social media as semiotic technology.
Social Semiotics 28:5 ► pp. 593 ff.
Seizov, O., A. J. Wulf & J. Luzak
2019. The Transparent Trap: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Design of Transparent Online Disclosures in the EU.
Journal of Consumer Policy 42:1 ► pp. 149 ff.
Seizov, Ognyan & Alexander Wulf
2020.
In Contractual Management,
► pp. 57 ff.
Seizov, Ognyan & Alexander J. Wulf
2021. Communicating Legal Information to Online Customers Transparently: A Multidisciplinary Multistakeholderist Perspective.
Journal of International Consumer Marketing 33:2 ► pp. 159 ff.
Song, Lianlian, Geoffrey Tso & Yelin Fu
2019. Click behavior and link prioritization: Multiple demand theory application for web improvement.
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 70:8 ► pp. 805 ff.
Vorvilas, George, Thanassis Karalis & Konstantinos Ravalis
2010. Applying Multimodal Discourse Analysis to Learning Objects' User Interface.
Contemporary Educational Technology 1:3
Windscheid, Leon, Lynn Bowes-Sperry, Karsten Jonsen & Michèle Morner
2018. Managing Organizational Gender Diversity Images: A Content Analysis of German Corporate Websites.
Journal of Business Ethics 152:4 ► pp. 997 ff.
Zammit, Katina
2015.
In International Handbook of Semiotics,
► pp. 1291 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 march 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.