Week+3

Q: Why are new genres created? Why is the definition of genre controversial and not so applicable to the formation of digital genres?
A discourse genre can be defined as forms of media that have "identifiable elements, rules of form, and content supporting both production and consumption". (Dillion and Gushrowski) New genres are created to adapt the social and information technology changes in our society as time passes. As new form of information technologies keep on forming, genres are no longer limited to classify books, music, art, movies etc. which transmitt messages to the audiences. Since genre is not fixed and has no boundaries, new genres keep forming to classify new types of information technologies. Nowadays, audiences receive information through varies digital media, such as websites, homepages/ blogs, online news and newspaper etc... As printed text on paper becomes less popular, digital genres has to be created to define new forms of media which slowly replace the old forms of media, for example: books. As stated in the article "Genres and the Web: Is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre?", personal homepages can been seen as a digital genre because this medium grows so fast that people even create standards for what a ideal homepage should contain. Elements such as welcome messages, photos, links, guestbooks are indispensable. This shared standards and rules of a digital medium allows a new digital genre to form. However, the typical definition of genre is not enough to define the rapid emergence of new information technology. Since digital information is widely spread around the world, standards and rules for the medium may vary across countries. Especially homepages, which are personalized with biased messages and is self-maintained, they no longer fit into one category of genre like books and movies.