Summary
Critical theorists have often drawn from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the rhizome when discussing the potential of the Internet. While the Internet may structurally appear as a rhizome, its day-to-day usage by millions via search engines precludes experiencing the random interconnectedness and potential democratizing function. Through a textual analysis of four search engines, I argue that Web searching has grown hierarchies, or “trees,” that organize data in tracts of knowledge and place users in marketing niches rather than assist in the development of new knowledge.
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Hess, A. (2008). Reconsidering the Rhizome: A Textual Analysis of Web Search Engines as Gatekeepers of the Internet. In: Spink, A., Zimmer, M. (eds) Web Search. Information Science and Knowledge Management, vol 14. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75829-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75829-7_3
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