| dc.description.abstract | In this paper, the materiality of annotation practices is analysed within digital online collaborative annotation platform Genius.com. The platform is regarded a socio-technical knowledge instrument, constituting directed participation between human and technical agents. By performing an affordance analysis of the platform and by focusing on formal properties of annotations attention is brought to people interacting with - and making meaning of produced text. Annotations are formally distinctive as participants add separate contextual layers instead of overwriting an author’s text. The ‘state of flux’, digital texts being constantly updated to the audiences narrative present, now moved to the annotation layer. This can be done strategically as meaning is depending on context. The digital landscape is a convergent one in which users build a holistic patchwork from textual fragments. The Genius annotations are modules that lay out convergent routes and can contain all machine-readable textual formats and genres. Standardised whole-text annotations organise texts in an artist-centred intertextual network, allowing for Verified Artists to be linked to their own text and remain involved. Off-platform, Genius cannot control and recognise ‘whole texts’, affording only for sentence-based annotation which can be used to juxtaposition statements. Knowledge works through a construct of several discursive positions, and annotations allow for co-existing discourses and additional signatures at one page. Signature are not equal, as [1] profile types creating a top-down elite and [2] IQ-points allow for bottom-up community acceptance. As the participatory threshold has lowered, acceptance shifts to after-publishing instead of up front. Each member can respond to annotations by commenting and up and downvoting. On-platform, users can edit annotations, differentiating between ‘proposed input’ and ‘accepted Genius annotations’, making for communities voice as preferred discourse. Off-platform all created positions formally co-exist equally. The paper raises questions of auctorial control as collaborative annotation spreads over the web, and questions of discursive context of the platform itself. | |
