Hypernews and Coherence

This article focuses on a mass medial text genre scarcely found today, but which might assume considerable importance within a few years. It looks at hypernews, ie news written, structured and distributed as hypertexts. Over the past few years, the Internet-based hypertext system World Wide Web has become a news channel of great significance, in Norway as in other parts of the world. Despite these recent developments, hypernews are still largely non-existent. One important reason for the absence of hypernews is related to the question of coherence, the inner system of logical relations expected in a text-based representation of an issue. Textual coherence is normally associated with a linear sequentialisation of text elements. If a news item is to be redefined for a medium inviting a non-linear text structure, how can the reader’s need for a logical thread through the material be met? My answer is based on the view that coherence is not primarily a text-immanent entity, but the result of an interplay between textual and cognitive factors. Whether the reader finds the text coherent or not is dependent on his/her understanding of the tasks involved in the reading process; what are the tasks assigned to the reader, and what to the text? In hypertextual contexts, the tasks are changed, and the change is related to the transition from an interpretative to an explorative reading process (see Aarseth 1997:64). Before we deal with this theme in greater depth, it might be useful to take a closer look at certain aspects of the technological and linguistic framework of our discussion.