A clarification of terms contained in this paper and how we use them to discuss both our goals and our findings is listed below. The goal of this research is to focus on understanding the relationship between the genre context and the user culture. Designers of web sites draw on culturally established brick and mortar practices to decide what should constitute the style and content of their sites. For example, news site pages incorporate many of the organization features of newspapers. Tourism sites often look like travel brochures.
Shopping sites incorporate many of the features of a store, such as aisles and shopping carts.
News, shopping, entertainment, and information sites are each a genre that can be identified and distinguished from the others in the content they provide to their intended audience. Some are informative, some serve to sell products, others exist strictly for entertainment. But we contend that in addition to content, and perhaps more vital than content, each genre has its unique, culturally established presentation style that defines and distinguishes the genre. The question I explore here is whether what is culturally established for a given genre in the brick and mortar world applies equally on the World Wide Web. We conducted two studies.