City Websites as a Multimodal Genre

Abstract

Official websites have become a necessary strategic tool in a city’s brand development and communication agenda, though their codification as a multimodal genre is still undertheorised. The chapter pinpoints the visual, verbal and navigational features of city websites that may be said to define them as a specific digital genre by reason of their occurrence and regularity. The case study is the Manchester City Council website, due to the leading role of the UK within Europe in the field of digital inclusion policies and to the recent successful redesign of the site itself. Drawing from Batemans Genre and Multimodality model, the analysis retrieves recognisable overcoded generic features in the service-oriented interface of a municipal website, reassessing the importance of citizen-centric communication for urban e-governance.