Operating Issue Networks on the Web

j INTRODUCTION Arguably, a small segment of organizations, governments and corporations have moved beyond ‘using’ to ‘operating’ the Internet. One of the beginnings of ‘Net operation’ lay in the emergence of Internet intelligence and monitoring companies. In 1995 the Ž rst of these companies was viewed in light of its ready off-Web comparison, the news-clipping service. Gradually, however, the companies have become known as Internet ‘surveillance’ Ž rms, where the main services comprise actively ‘monitoring’ what’s being said on the Net by their competitors (on competitor websites), by their critics (on ‘rogue’ and other websites), and by ‘Chinese whisperers’ (on newsgroups, mailing lists and listservs) (New York Times, 8 March 1999). To their clients the monitoring companies send indices, largely in the well-known styles of Web and newsgroup search engine returns. Depending on the severity of the ‘word on the Net’, the surveillance companies also recommend some form of action to be taken, in order to quash the rumour or put a more permanent end to the mongering (see Figure 1). While much of the more serious recommended action appears to be of the legal variety, in the form of trademark infringement, unfair trade and/or liable law suits, the less severe falls into the realm of ‘media tactics’. Indeed, certain corporations under Ž re for their human rights and environmental records often engage in tactical Net media (Garcia and Lovink, 1999). Be it the rather standard discursive ‘greenwashing’ of products, the more subtle creation of anger venting Net ‘grafŽ ti spaces’ such as the Shell forum, or the establishment of hyperlinks to one’s critics, such Net manoeuvring becomes immediately legible and trackable on the Internet knowledge maps, as we come to later in introducing new Web debate mapping