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The purpose of this assignment is an analysis of various cybergenres available across the Internet. According to Philip E. Agre in "Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic and Political Contexts," "a genre is a relatively stable, expectable form of communication. Genres are addressed to particular communities and fit into particular activities in the lives of that community's members." Additionally, in Kevin Crowston's article, "Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World Wide Web," Yates and Orlikowski define genre as "a distinctive type of communicative action, characterized by a socially recognized communicative purpose and common aspect of form."

These theories of genre provide the basis of an analysis and discussion of news genres, particularly the advent of online newspapers and their evolution from traditional print based newspapers. Newspapers are an extremely important medium where people gather relevant information about local, national and international events. Therefore, both print and online newspapers are required to carry out different functions in order to effectively present news information. Furthermore, a comparison between the New York Times.Com and The Toronto Sun.Com will be provided to demonstrate how these functions determine exemplary and non-exemplary online newspaper sites.

Additionally, a variety of conventions and differences that pertain to both print and online newspapers will be provided and used through an analysis of The Toronto Star compared to The Toronto Star.com in order to show how most print conventions are still prevalent online.

Finally, a discussion of the Advantages and Disadvantages of the online news genre is crucial to increased development, effectiveness and usability for today's growing digital evolution.

References
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/genre.html
http://crowston.syr.edu/papers/hicss97.html