Studying Web 2.0 Interactivity: A Research Framework and Two Case Studies

With more than one third of the world’s population being online, the Internet has increasingly become part of modern living, giving rise to popular literature that often takes a teleological and celebratory perspective, heralding the Internet and Web 2.0 specifically, as an enabler of participation, democracy, and interactivity. However, one should not take these technological affordances of Web 2.0 for granted. This article applies an interaction framework to the analysis of two Web 2.0 websites viewed as spaces where interaction goes beyond the mere consultation and selection of content, i.e., as spaces supporting the (co)creation of content and value. The authors’ approach to interactivity seeks to describe websites in objective, structural terms as spaces of user, document, and website affordances. The framework also makes it possible to talk about the websites in subjective, functional terms, considering them as spaces of perceived inter-action, intra-action and outer-action affordances. Analysis finds that both websites provide numerous user, document, and website affordances that can serve as inter-action or social affordances.