Reproduced and emergent genres of communication on the World-Wide Web

The World Wide Web is growing quickly and being applied to many new types of communications. As a basis for studying organizational communications, Yates and Orlikowski (1992; Orlikowski & Yates, 1994) proposed using genres. They deŽfined genres as “typified communicative actions characterized by similar substance and form and taken in response to recurrent situations” (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, p. 299). They further suggested that communications in a new media would show both reproduction and adaptation of existing communicative genres as well as the emergence of new genres.