Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web
This paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number o...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Conference item |
| Language: | English |
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Association for Computing Machinery
2014
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| _version_ | 1817931237447172096 |
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| author | Hale, SA Yasseri, T Cowls, J Meyer, ET Schroeder, R Margetts, H |
| author_facet | Hale, SA Yasseri, T Cowls, J Meyer, ET Schroeder, R Margetts, H |
| author_sort | Hale, SA |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | This paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number of links in the archive and changes in the link density of different second-level domains over time. We then explore changes over time within a particular second-level domain, the academic subdomain .ac.uk, and compare linking practices with variables, including institutional affiliation, league table ranking, and geographic location. We do not detect institutional affiliation affecting linking practices and find only partial evidence of league table ranking affecting network centrality, but find a clear inverse relationship between the density of links and the geographical distance between universities. This echoes prior findings regarding offline academic activity, which allows us to argue that real-world factors like geography continue to shape academic relationships even in the Internet age. We conclude with directions for future uses of web archive resources in this emerging area of research. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T01:41:57Z |
| format | Conference item |
| id | oxford-uuid:972ddac7-6d44-4d06-89b5-2d4753daf6a5 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-09T03:18:50Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:972ddac7-6d44-4d06-89b5-2d4753daf6a52024-10-31T09:30:31ZMapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the webConference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:972ddac7-6d44-4d06-89b5-2d4753daf6a5EnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordAssociation for Computing Machinery2014Hale, SAYasseri, TCowls, JMeyer, ETSchroeder, RMargetts, HThis paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number of links in the archive and changes in the link density of different second-level domains over time. We then explore changes over time within a particular second-level domain, the academic subdomain .ac.uk, and compare linking practices with variables, including institutional affiliation, league table ranking, and geographic location. We do not detect institutional affiliation affecting linking practices and find only partial evidence of league table ranking affecting network centrality, but find a clear inverse relationship between the density of links and the geographical distance between universities. This echoes prior findings regarding offline academic activity, which allows us to argue that real-world factors like geography continue to shape academic relationships even in the Internet age. We conclude with directions for future uses of web archive resources in this emerging area of research. |
| spellingShingle | Hale, SA Yasseri, T Cowls, J Meyer, ET Schroeder, R Margetts, H Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title | Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title_full | Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title_fullStr | Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title_full_unstemmed | Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title_short | Mapping the UK webspace: fifteen years of British universities on the web |
| title_sort | mapping the uk webspace fifteen years of british universities on the web |
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