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 MAEYER:  How  to  make  sense  of  hyperlinks  (draft)  

How  to  make  sense  of  hyperlinks?  An  overview  of  link  studies  
 
 
Juliette  De  Maeyer  
FNRS  Research  fellow  
Université  Libre  de  Bruxelles  (Brussels,  Belgium)  
Dpt  of  Information  and  Communication  Sciences  
 
Juliette.De.Maeyer[at]ulb.ac.be  

Paper  presented  to  A  decade  in  internet  time:  symposium  on  the  dynamics  of  internet  and  
society  (OII-­‐ICS  2011  Symposium,  Oxford,  September  2011)  
 
This  is  a  work-­‐in-­‐progress  article,  please  contact  the  author  for  updated  version  before  
citing.  
 
 
 
 
 
Abstract:  
Hypertextuality  has  always  been  a  fundamental  characteristic  of  the  web  since  
its  inception.  The  ability  to  link  pages,  sites  and  documents  stands  out  as  what  
essentially   differentiate   the   web   from   other   media.   For   more   than   a   decade  
now,   scientists   have   investigated   what   kinds   of   links   are   present   on   websites,  
how   links   between   sites   are   structured,   how   they   can   be   interpreted   as   proxies  
for  measuring  other  phenomena,  and  how  they  have  an  effect  at  the  interface  
between  users  and  online  contents.    
This  paper  aims  at  mapping  the  field  of  hyperlink  research,  by  sketching  broad  
distinctions  between  the  different  areas  that  have  investigated  the  link.   It  aims  
at  offering  an  overview  of  current  and  past  research,  and  suggests  a  reasonable  
agenda  for  link  studies  in  the  future.  
After   a   brief   detour   through   history   and   precursors   of   hyperlinks,   it   argues   that  
hyperlink  research  can  be  broadly  divided  in  three  main  perspectives:  the  first  
is  interested  in  the  structure  of  the  web  and  in  large  hyperlinks  networks,  the  
second   explores   the   social   significance   of   links   in   communities   of   websites,   and  
the   third   discusses   the   impact   of   links   on   users.   Those   different   levels   are  
inevitably  tied,  as  different  facets  of  a  same  phenomenon.  
The   different   works   reviewed   demonstrate   that,   behind   their   humble  
appearance,  links  are  complex  objects  that  need  to  be  problematized.    
 

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926301

DE  MAEYER:  How  to  make  sense  of  hyperlinks  (draft)  

The hyperlink is undoubtedly one of the central elements of the world wide web. At the
core of its architecture, the humble link is now so entrenched in our habits that we barely
notice it: clicking is natural. However, hyperlinks remain challenging objects of research.
Many scholars have taken possession of various kinds of links, to serve sometimes
extremely different research purposes.
This paper aims at mapping the field of hyperlink research, by sketching broad distinctions
between the different areas that have investigated the link. After a brief detour through
history and precursors of hyperlinks, I argue that hyperlink research can be broadly
divided in three main perspectives: the first is interested in the structure of the web and in
large hyperlinks networks, the second explores the social significance of links in
communities of websites, and the third discusses the impact of links on users. Those
different levels are inevitably tied, as different facets of a same phenomenon.
The review presented in this paper does not aim at being exhaustive, it rather seeks to
exemplify different trends in research. I ultimately argue that hyperlinks, more than ever,
need to be problematized. At every level, hyperlink research shows us that links form
complex, multi-faceted phenomena. Links — and the meaning they carry — should
therefore never be taken for granted. The familiarity and apparent simplicity of the humble
object that is the link should not mislead us: it deserves our full attention. Links offer us
the previously unknown possibility to finely trace back an infinity of associations made by
humans. As any socially rooted phenomenon, they therefore deserve to be fully
contextualized, and subtly analyzed.

I. An historical detour
The term « hyperlink » was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965 (Vandendorpe 1999:114)
inspired by the work of Vannevar Bush. When it comes to discussing the origins of the
link, we may also pinpoint some well-known forerunners: the footnote, the citation, or any
system of cross-references. A brief peek through some studies of those predecessors of the
link might shine a light on some aspects of the modern hyperlink.
Scholars working on those objects have variously addressed the following question: why
do footnotes, citations or any cross-referencing system exist? What are their purposes and
the functions? Some elements in their answers point towards a same conclusion:
attributing a definitive raison d’être to those objects is usually a complex task. In this respect,
a detour to some aspects of previous research on precursors of the link may relevantly
enlighten us, and help us to shape informed research programs.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926301

DE  MAEYER:  How  to  make  sense  of  hyperlinks  (draft)  

In his « curious history » of the footnote, Grafton (1997) argues that even though all
footnotes look the same at first sight, there’s a whole array of divergent practices going on
at the bottom of the pages. Footnotes, he adds, may fulfill their two main functions, i.e.
persuading the reader that the author has done « an acceptable amount of work » (Grafton
1997:22) and indicating the chief sources that the author has actually used. But he also
inventories other concomitant functions: footnotes are sometimes « daggers stuck in the
back of the author’s colleagues » (p.8) ; they may be « equivalent to the ancient evocation
of the Muse » (p.7) ; « reflect the intellectual styles of different national scientific
communities » (p.13) ; or may serve entertaining purposes, as exemplified as early as
Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as « nothing in that work did
more that its footnotes to amuse his friends or enrage his enemies » (p.1). Similarly,
Landau (2006) notes that footnotes can become objects of satire or that their only raison
d’être can be their picturesque nature.
Comparable uses are underlined by Zimmer (2009) in his analysis of 18th century
Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and their use of « renvois » - the system of cross-
references it featured. Zimmer argues that to « avoid the wrath of authorities, Diderot and
d’Alembert relied on irony, innuendo and indirection when discussing controversial
topics » (Zimmer 2009:103), and that cross-reference was the « most used - and most
subversive - tool » to do so.
The large body of research known as bibliometrics (Thelwall 2008) explores the rationales
behind academic citations. Results similarly show that the motivations to cite are diverse.
For example, Scharnhnorst and Thelwall (2005) point out that, beside the widely accepted
idea that citations represent a « formal acknowledgement of prior contributions of other
published researchers » (implying that the most cited paper is equivalent to the most
influential research) citer motivations greatly vary. For instance, different disciplinary
traditions, the nature of a paper (the fact that it is primarily concerned with methodology,
for example) or the fact that the authors are living in the same country or inhabit the same
physical office location strongly influence citations patterns (Scharnhorst and Thelwall
2005:1520).
Subversion, entertainment or satire might not directly come to mind when we think about
footnotes or citations. The above inquiries into hyperlinks’ ancestors certainly indicate that
our interpretations of any cross-reference system must be cautious, and should not assume
that whatever kind of cross-reference we study bears any straightforward, universal
function.

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With that « historical » forewarning in mind, we can now focus on research investigating
the hypertext per se. The field can be divided in three broad streams, with contrasting
perspectives. First, there is the science of networks that explores the web at large and the
hyperlink structures that constitute it. Second, there are various social scientists who
scrutinize the social significance of links in various contexts and within different
communities. Finally, there’s the question of usability and a whole stream of research that
examine what happens at the interface between hypertext and users.

II. Networks of hyperlinks

Studies pertaining to the 'new science of networks' (Barabasi 2003; D. Watts 2003; D. J.
Watts 2004) shed light on properties of hyperlink networks at a general level. They are
interested in understanding the web’s underlying structure. Such investigations into global
hyperlinking patterns have 'uncovered principles that help to understand networks of all
type' (Tremayne 2004:234) 'Peculiar and fascinating properties' (Ghitalla 2009) were
identified. For example, researchers have determined that the web is a 'scale-free network,
dominated by hubs and nodes with a very large number of links' (Barabasi, 2003: 165),
and have revealed 'strong regularities, among which the existence of a ‘universal power
law’' (Adamic and Huberman 2001:131). For their part, Albert et al. (1999) established
the diameter of the web and its small-world nature: despite the vast total amount of
existing websites, there are, on average, nineteen degrees of separation between two pages
(Barabasi, 2003: 165), i.e. one webpage is on average nineteen clicks away from another.
Researchers also demonstrated that finding a path between two pages is not obvious:
Broder et al. (2000) proposed a fragmented model of the web corresponding to a bow-tie
structure where the direction of the links strongly matters (Barabasi, 2003: 166).
According to their analysis, the web’s macroscopic structure naturally breaks into four
parts: there is a central core, coined the 'giant strongly connected component', all of whose
pages can reach one another; an IN-component that can reach the core; an OUT-
component that can be reached from it; and tendrils that can neither reach the core nor be
reached from it (Broder et al., 2000). This set of findings belonging to the science of
networks informs us about the structure of hyperlink networks: they form a collection of
general observations that one needs to be aware of when dealing with hyperlinked material

III. The social significance of links

Social scientists recurrently investigate links in order to understand a variety of issues. In
various disciplines and contexts, hyperlinks are interpreted as proxies for other social

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phenomena. This section subsequently attempts at reviewing some trends of hyperlink

research with a social spin. With network sciences’ growing popularity among social
scientists, and social network analysis gaining momentum (e.g. Carrington, Scott, and
Wasserman 2005; Carrington et al. 2005; Hansen, Shneiderman, and Smith 2010; Hogan
2008; Marin and Wellman 2011; Scott and P. Carrington 2011), the border between
studies scrutinizing hyperlink structures and those attempting to interpret the social
significance of links becomes thinner. The distinction between the different fields
delineated here must therefore be understood as a continuum rather than a strict
compartmentalization.

Indicators of authority
For what other phenomena do hyperlinks stand? Which sociological meanings hide behind
them? The work of Brin and Page (1998) that explained the logics of their 'Page Rank'
algorithm initiated the trend of using links to calculate authority or relevance (Rogers
2010) In this perspective, every link is considered as an implicit vote about the quality or
relevance of a piece of content (Finkelstein 2008): the more a piece of content is linked, the
more authoritative it is. Such assumptions rest on a parallel between hyperlinks and
citations in the academic context: when often cited by their peers, scientists’ contributions
are considered important and valuable. Similarly, Brunn and Dodge (2001) argue that we
can exploit hyperlinks to assess trust in the context of international online trade. In
concrete terms, various methods and different indexes have been proposed to
systematically measure this notion of authority or trust on the web, as illustrated by the
famous Page Rank (Brin and Page, 1998) used by Google or the 'authorities/hubs' model
(Borodin et al. 2001)

Reflecting political affiliations

Link studies have gained importance in the field of political science, where researchers
have investigated the 'political web'. Papers by Park and other colleagues continuously
explored South-Korean politicians’ web presence. They mined links to assess the 'new
ecology of political communication' (Han Woo Park, Thelwall, and Kluver 2005). Their
main idea is that links signal political affiliations, whether they investigate links stemming
from politicians’ homepages to understand their political agenda, the communication
network formed by assembly members and political parties (Han Woo Park, Kim, and
Barnett 2004) or the relations between citizens’ and politicians’ blogs (Han Woo Park and
Jankowski 2008). For instance, 'links embedded in political blogs can be taken as

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technical indicator of the ideological landscape of a blog sphere being studied' (Park and
Jankowski, 2008: 62). Still in the political field, Williams et al. (2005) examined the
hyperlinking strategies of candidates taking part in the 2004 US presidential race, and
compared the different strategies used in the candidates’ blogs or homepages. They suggest
that different genres of websites go with different linking styles: links on the candidates’
homepages more often point to internal fundraising or revenue-generating pages, whereas
blog links are less likely to solicit donations and propose more external links. In this case,
the authors suggest, links are loaded with strategic campaign interests.
Hindman (2009) analyzed links in online political communities and focused on hyperlinks
as a predictor of traffic - and therefore success of political websites. His conclusions point
to the advent of what he calls a « Googlearchy », i.e. « the rule of the most heavily linked »
Accordingly, the number of links pointing to a site is the most important determinant of its
visibility ; the web presents a « Russian-nesting-doll structure », dominated at every level
by winners-take-all patterns ; and this patter is self-perpetuating, therefore showing a rich-
get-richer phenomenon (Hindman 2009:55)..

Signs of political homophily

When it comes to assessing political issues, link studies are additionally concerned with the
notions of political homophily and cyberbalkanisation. Proposed by Sunstein (2001) the notion
of cyberbalkanisation suggests that with the possibilities of personalization proposed by
the web and its ever-growing offer in contents, people tend to generally consult pages
harboring opinions similar to theirs. Such isolation is presented as a danger for democracy,
as 'people will abandon the reading of dissenting political opinions in favor of material that
is closely aligned with their own ideological position' (Hargittai, Gallo, and Kane 2008).
Hargittai et al. (2008) tested the cyberbalkanisation assumption in the 2004 US political
blogosphere, and found that widely read political bloggers link more often to those who
share their views. But this trend, they added, does not increase over time. Also in the
context of the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign, Adamic and Glance (2005) measured the
interconnectedness of the two parties, as embodied by the 'degree of interaction between
liberal and conservative blogs' (Adamic and Glance, 2005: 1). They witnessed a 'divided
blogosphere: liberals and conservatives linking primarily within their separate
communities' (Adamic and Glance, 2005: 14), with only 10% of the links bridging the two
groups. Moreover, they detected that conservative blogs link to each other more
frequently and in denser patterns. Ackland et al. (2009), further exploring Adamic and

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Glance’s dataset, claimed that manifestations of homophily – or 'assortative mixing' as they

call it – must not be attributed to the intrinsic nature of bloggers to favor their own kind,
but that this linking behavior is explained by a model of network formation in the
blogosphere and, more precisely, by the dynamics between a political majority and
minority. In other words, homophily is merely an effect of the forces of the network, and
'it is possible to view the creation of links by and between political bloggers as a reflection
of the relative popularity of one ideology over another in the underlying population from
which bloggers are drawn' (Ackland and Shorish 2009). The authors admitted, however,
that while focusing on link creation as a result of the relative popularity of one ideology
over another, their model abstracts away from other influences likely to dictate link
formation (Ackland and Shorish, 2009: 397). The evolution of political linking patterns
over time has also been studied, as exemplified by Hsu and Park (2010) who scrutinized
the differences between different generations of links. Their 'sociology of hyperlinks'
explored links produced by South-Korean politicians, and highlighted a significant
evolution between web 1.0 (personal websites), web 2.0 (blogs) and Twitter links: the
network of links appeared denser over time, and there is evidence that it became
increasingly less centralized (Hsu and Park, 2010: 10).
To sum up the state of link studies in the political field, we see that researchers use links as
indicators of other phenomena that vary in their levels of abstraction and generalization.
The most down-to-earth approach interprets links as mere signs of communication
networks between involved actors, or strategic tools for campaigning in one particular case
study. One step further, we find the notions of links as signs of ideological affiliations, or
symptoms of 'cyberbalkanisation'.

Tracing public debates

Besides politicians’ online behaviors, wider political issues are also on the agenda. Here,
scanning links involves looking at how public debate is shaped on the web, and how
'discursive affinities' or 'issue networks' are structured. Rogers and Ben-David (2008)
examined the issue network around the Israeli security fence debate, and showed how the
various actors were situated toward each other. By mapping the links between NGOs’
websites, they discovered that Israeli left-wing organizations are in 'virtual isolation' in the
overall issue space (Rogers and Ben-David, 2008: 63). Similarly, Rogers and Marres
(2000) attempted at 'debate-scaping' the discussion about climate-change. They encounter
different 'linking styles' typical of the .com, .gov and .org domains, and noticed, for

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example, that 'governmental institutions tend to form one massive, autonomously

operating body' (Rogers and Marres, 2000: 9). Consequently, they argue that the debate
about global climate change is owing to the presence of a central governmental authority
(Rogers and Marres, 2000: 13). Marres (2004), in turn, concentrated on the argument
around a controversial project led by the World Bank. Elaborating on actor-network-
theory, she used links to describe how the issue was evolving and shaped by different
actors. All those studies use the links as visible trails of public issues being debated, as
tools to clearly map the positions of involved actors. The authors implicitly suggest that
such debate-scaping is useful to better understand what is at stake in our democratic
societies.

Connections between blogs

Efforts to map links between blogs also relate to this movement. In this context,
hypertextual proximity helps to make sense of vast 'blogospheres', i.e. sets of
interconnected blogs. Blogs are particularly salient objects when it comes to studying links,
because they are a link-driven genre (Blood 2000). Bruns (2007) mixed the issue-centered
approach with the emphasis on blogs, as he maps the interactions between Australian
bloggers about the David Hicks case. His findings highlighted a 'tendency for discussion
to cluster around a handful of sites which are defined by their political orientation', a lack
of coverage of the case by bloggers outside of Australia as well as limited interactions
between bloggers and the mainstream media (Bruns, 2007). Tremayne et al. (2006)
mapped the structure of the Iraq war blogosphere. Their findings are consistent with
previous comments on cyberbalkanisation, and they highlight a blogosphere structured in
two distinct halves, the liberal and the conservative – 'but also a fairly robust cluster of
blogs that serve as conduits between the sides' (Tremayne et al., 2006: 305). Etling and his
colleagues’ approach is wider: they scanned nation-wide blogospheres at a global level)
(Etling et al. 2010, 2009; Kelly and Etling 2008) to understand how public debates
between bloggers are shaped and how they fit in wider media ecology. In that perspective,
links significantly help in detecting 'attentive clusters', i.e. groups of blogs that show
similar linking behavior and that link to the same resources. Those methods are 'based on
the principle that macro structure arises from the tendency of individuals to link more
frequently to things that interest them and to people with whom they share attributes or
social relations' (Etling et al., 2010: 11). Researchers use linking patterns to make sense of
large amounts of blogs and to gather them in significant clusters – as similar linking

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behaviors 'often arise from intuitively grasped interests, ideologies, preferences and
affiliations that exist among bloggers' (Etling et al., 2010: 14). From then on,
hypertextuality constitutes a non-semantic tool to discover semantic patterns (Jacomy and
Ghitalla 2007): if two blogs link to exactly the same resources, it is likely that they will
cover similar topics, and perhaps hold similar views on them. In substance, hyperlinks help
to detect 'topical localities' (Ghitalla, 2009); hypertextual proximity indicates similarities in
content (Ghitalla, Le Berre, and Renault 2005).

International flows of information

Links studies also set out to tackle journalistic issues. In this framework, hypertextuality is
associated with positive journalistic values such as interactivity, transparency, credibility
or diversity. Adding links to stories allegedly improves online news: 'Choosing links to
include in your story gets to the very essence of what it means to be a journalist. (Foust
2009:161).
Therefore, links stemming from news sites are investigated to assess those sites’
compliance with shared professional standards of quality online journalism. Nevertheless,
empirical findings tend to indicate that news sites do not live up to the expectations, as
their use of external linking is scarce (Dimitrova et al. 2003; Dimitrova and Neznanski
2006; Kenney, Gorelik, and Mwangi 2000; Quandt 2008; Stray 2010; Tankard and Ban
1998; Tremayne 2005; Tsui 2008).
Links on news sites are also examined to map international information flows. Chang et al.
(2009) tested the structure of links originating from news sites in regard to the world-
system theory 'which emphasizes the asymmetry between information-rich and -poor
countries' (Barnet et al., 2010:2). Contrary to the impression of openness favored by the
internet as a borderless medium, linkages between nations via outgoing hyperlinks to
websites of other countries remain relatively closed (Chang et al., 2009: 155). Halavais
(2000) presented similar findings concerning the web at large. He argues that most links
are restrained within national borders: 'although geographic borders may be removed from
cyberspace, the social structures found in the `real' world are inscribed in online networks'
(Halavais, 2000: 7). The intertwinement of 'real world' geography and international link
structures stands at the core of other studies. Barnett and Sung (2005) examined the
patterns of communication among nations, through the interconnection of top-level
domain names (such as '.de' or '.fr'). They show that hyperlinks comply with a center-to-
periphery structure. According to them, economic relations are the primary organizing

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mechanism of international communication. Links reflect power interactions between

countries, and core countries are clearly central to the web. Typically, the United States
constitute the most central node in the hyperlink network (Barnett and Sung, 2005: 226).
This phenomenon turned out to be even clearer when Barnett et al. (2010) overcame an
inherent bias of previous studies by unveiling what is behind the .com domains: the core
countries’ domination becomes stronger. Also mixing virtual and physical geography, Lin
et al. (2007) analyzed links between blogs as indicators of connections between U.S. cities.
They pinpointed 'super metropolitan clusters' (Lin et al., 2007: 21) i.e. densest hyperlink
networks around cities with cultural and political prominence. Thus, 'centers of cultural
and news production still attract the most attention nationwide' (Lin et al., 2007: 22),
whereas cities of less cultural-political significance mostly connect with places near them.

Social networks
Finally, links are also used as signs of relationships between people. In Adamic and Adar’s
work (2003), for instance, hyperlinks between homepages are used as an indicator of
'friendship' between students. The authors argue that using links in this context allows
collecting data to track social network in a convenient way – whereas traditional social
network research has to cope with long interviews and observations. With the always-
increasing success of social networking sites, studies applying social network analysis to
those online territories have multiplied (see e.g. Hogan 2008; Marin & Wellman 2011 for
generic, introductory overviews).

Shortcomings of link interpretation and how to overcome them

All the authors mentioned above emphasize important limitations to their work.
As suggested by research focusing on footnotes, citations and previous cross-referencing
systems, variations in context might constitute an important obstacle for a stable, universal
link interpretation. Even when considering the simplest dichotomy, it is obvious that a link
can mean praise as well as criticism. Most authors thus acknowledge the importance of the
context of links. For instance, scholars studying blog links often make a difference
between 'in-post' links and 'blogroll' links, i.e. the links present within the text of a blog
post or those displayed in a side-column (Adamic, 2008; Lin et al., 2007), and argue that
they cannot be amalgamated. Adamic (2008) claims that blogroll links serve as badges that
bloggers may display, they indicate 'a general social awareness on behalf of the author'
(Marlow, 2004: 3), and constitute an indicator of the ideological landscape surrounding
the blogs (Park and Jankowski, 2008; Park and Thelwall, 2003). For Lin et al., blogroll

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links are more indicative of interpersonal affiliation than in-post links (Lin et al., 2007: 17),
whereas in-post links are considered as a better indicator of active conversations going on
in the blogosphere. They allow 'authors to have a sort of distributed conversation'
(Marlow, 2004: 3), and they 'signal active engagement with another blogger' (Hargittai et
al., 2008). As argued by Adamic and Glance (2005: 7), the 'linking behavior within posts is
more indicative of a blogger’s reading activity than are blogroll links'. To sum up, there is
no cohesive theory about the potentially different meanings of blogroll and in-post links,
and we are not even considering links that exist outside the blogging genre.
More broadly, differences between web genres also matter. For instance, the framework
used to make sense of links on personal homepages is deemed inadequate for hyperlinks in
the blogosphere 'because there are several types that are unique to blogs' (Park and
Thelwall, 2008). In their study of the evolution of linking behavior, Hsui and Park noticed
that incentives to link vary: a link on Twitter, for instance, is likely to result of a different
motivation than a link on a homepage or on a blog. Most authors acknowledge that
grasping the motivations behind linking would greatly enhance their analysis (Park, 2010):
'several methods need to be employed to examine the reasons developers of websites form
a network with other sites via hyperlinks: survey, in-depth interviews, observation,
comparative analysis of website contents and other network data would contribute to an
understanding of the social relationships among the network’s components' (Park, 2003a:
58). But even by interviewing link creators, notes Thelwall (2006: 4), it would be almost
impossible to systematically identify what someone has in mind when placing a link.
Concretely, he adds, finding the author of a webpage might be difficult; the authors may
not remember why they included URLs; and in-depth interviews are difficult to carry out
on a large scale.
Facing these difficulties in treating links universally and at a large scale, most researchers
successfully opt for semi-automatic methods, or a mix between large-scale, automatic data
retrieval and smaller, manual processing. Most of the papers reviewed here do more than
pure link counts or link network analyses. They often mix link counts with other methods
and other datasets. Content analysis of texts is often brought in: Adamic and Adar (2003)
looked at the texts on presidential candidates’ homepages. Etling et al. (2010) use
computer-assisted text analysis of blog contents. TACT (Textual Analysis Computing Tools)
were also used by Rogers and Marres (2000) in order to locate key phrases in their
context. Park and Jankowski (2008) carried out a follow-up qualitative analysis on blog
titles. Rogers and Ben-David (2008) chose to pair their link analysis with a term analysis:

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they scrutinized the words used to frame their topic of interest (i.e. the building of the
Israeli 'security fence'). All those approaches mix link studies with the examination of
other web contents. For Thelwall (2001), however, this is not enough: we also need to
combine link analysis with 'non-web based information', in order to go 'towards a hybrid
calculation combining web information with another source'. For example, in his study of
universities’ 'web impact factor', Thelwall integrated the number of Faculty members of a
particular institution (i.e. a non-web based information) as a factor in the calculation.
In that methodological maelstrom, validity may be achieved — as suggested by most of the
works mentioned in this section — by combining link analysis with other tools and
methods, as well as with a strong focus on human expertise to make sense of the
connections. The researchers whose work is examined above implemented such
framework, implicitly or explicitly. Inspecting their work side by side shows us that there
is such thing as link studies in the social sciences. What they have in common is not a
unique interpretation of the hyperlink, but rather a shared, mixed methodology. Various
authors proposed their ad hoc tricks to tackle the various methodological issues detected.
Their rapprochement in this literature review pleads for a systematization of their methods
in a unified yet adaptive framework that would consist in combining quantitative link
counts, qualitative inquiries and valuation of field expertise to support link interpretation.

IV. Users and usability

At the other end of links research stands the array of works concerned with users. How do
readers react to hypertext? Is the reading process modified by the presence of hyperlinks,
and if so, how?
Those questions are subjects to vast controversies. It is not within the scope of this paper
to decide who’s right or wrong, but some important elements of the debate need to be
underlined.
Are hyperlinks good for readers? Recent developments in that discussion, epitomized by
Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows (2010), and the heated debate that followed, seem to
indicate that we are way beyond the late 1990’s naive enthusiasm about hypertext and its
benefits for readers. Briefly summarized, Carr’s point is that links within the text
constitute a distraction and therefore weakens our comprehension: « Evaluating links and
navigating a path through them, it turned out, involves mentally demanding problem-
solving tasks that are extraneous to the act of reading itself. Deciphering hypertext

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substantially increases readers' cognitive load and hence weaken their ability to
comprehend and retain what they're reading. » (Carr 2010:126).
Carr’s argument builds on various pieces of research that have investigated the cognitive
load of hypertext on users (e.g. Destefano and Lefevre 2007; Miall and Dobson 2001). As
Rosenberg (2010) rightfully pointed out, some specificities of those works should be
dutifully acknowledged before jumping into the bandwagon. For instance, Rosenberg
underlines that the 2001 study by « two Canadian scholars » (that is Miall and Dobson,
2001) presented by Carr as evidence that « research continues to show that people who
read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more that those who read
text peppered with links » (Carr 2010:127) actually proposes findings that are impossible
to generalize (as it is carefully noted by the authors themselves). The experiment carried
out by Miall and Dobson is primarily concerned with literary fiction (a precision
frequently repeated in the study, but omitted in Carr’s review). The experimentation
« depended on adapting for hypertext a story originally designed for the printed page » .
However, the authors also insist on the fact that the adaptation was entirely simulated: the
text was not re-written to fit the hypertextual format, but links were simply added: they
seemed to branch in some meaningful way but actually all led the reader on to the same
next paragraph (Rosenberg 2010). To put it briefly, a text conceived as a written short
fiction was superficially and artificially transformed in an hypertextual piece - that
probably goes against all the usability rules about links, such as those contained in the
W3C recommendations (W3C Recommendation n.d.). The details of such an experiment
need to be known before following Carr’s generalization about « hypertext reading »
Settling the argument about the cognitive load of hypertext would be beyond the scope of
this paper. But the heated debate highlights noteworthy refinements that should be taken
into account whenever researching hypertext-related matters.
First, it forces us to think about hyperlinks in a nuanced way. Commentators (Miller 2010;
Kirkpatrick 2010; Chittum 2010; Fry 2010) observed that Carr’s argument about
« delinkification » solely concerns in-text hyperlinks, and not other types of links (those
standing at the end of an article for example, or in a side-column). This draws attention to
the fact that different kinds of links exist, a distinction that should be fully acknowledged
and further researched.
Secondly, if different genres of text exist, different genres of hypertext should be
subsequently distinguished. The line drawn by Rosenberg between « literary » and
« pragmatic » hypertext reminds us that an important part of previous research on the

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cognitive effect of hyperlinks is more concerned with radical, literary experiments than
with the everyday, casual links we see on the web. Pragmatic hypertext « adopted
hypertext as a practical tool for organizing and cross-associating information », while
literary hypertext « experimental art form, which might transform the essentially linear
nature of our reading into a branching game, puzzle or poem, in which the reader
collaborates with the author. » (Rosenberg 2010). This literary point of view,
characterized as « dogmatic » by Vandendorpe (1999), implies that « literary hypertext
should aim to radically distinguish itself from the traditional novel by not imposing a fixed
sequence on the reader’s path. Readers would click on links leading to new blocks of
information, following only their own associative network, wandering in total freedom. To
open up this space for the readers’ clicks, hypertext fiction would necessarily have to be
cut up into segments connected by a network of hyperlinks, among which readers would
navigate as they wished, preferably in an opaque manner, not following any imposed
order » (Vandendorpe 1999:77). Generalizing results about such radical artistic
experiments to our everyday reading experience might therefore be something future
research should be extremely cautious about.
Finally, the assumption of linearity associated with offline media must also be nuanced —
and the question of what hypertext is compared to is crucial. For example, it should not be
taken for granted that offline media are linear, as Vandendorpe argues that they possess
strong elements of tabularity (the concept he opposes to linearity) (Vandendorpe 1999:39).
Modern printed news media, he argues, are similar to paintings that we globally scan
before concentrating to particular details. Newspaper or magazine layouts often present
different points of entry (titles, subtitles, leads, frames) that should be carefully considered
before characterizing those media as « linear » (Vandendorpe 1999:65).
To put it briefly, debates about usability reminds us that different kinds of links and
different genres of text exist, with specificities that should not go unnoticed.

V. What can we learn from the mosaic of hyperlink research?

Ranging from the hugeness of link networks through the interpretation of links to users
experiences, the mosaic of studies and works reviewed above might leave us with a certain
sense of dizziness. Will it ever be possible to unify all those different perspectives in a
single, universal « hyperlink science »? This is certainly not the goal of this paper.
The different approaches nonetheless benefit from being confronted to each other.

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All the subtleties and obstacles delineated above primarily indicate that links cruelly need
to be problematized. Linking is a social behaviour, and links, as a result, must be
considered in their whole complexity. A peek into some of the ancestors of links showed us
that the way people used those cross-references are sometimes unexpected, amusing,
subversive. Network sciences continually demonstrates that complex forces are at stake
when considering large sets of links. Social scientists struggle to give fair interpretations of
links, which often means digging deeper in the context of their creation, in the social
tissues in which links are born. And finally, usability research reminds us that users are an
additional layer to be taken into account, perhaps the most important.
As simple and straightforward as it may appear at first sight, the link reflects the incredible
complexity of our social world. Research into hyperlinks should therefore not reduce them
to simple, transparent technical artefacts. By restoring complexity and mirroring
perspectives at the centre of our reflection, we might grab an important opportunity:
studying the social through those many traces left on the internet, reinstating meaning in
the web of hyperlinks.

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