The intricate web: network and rhizome metaphors in hypertext and the web and the epistemic challenge of fake news

PurposeThis article analyses the structure of hypertext and the world wide web through the contrasting metaphors of the network and the rhizome and applies that analysis to the epistemic challenge presented by fake news.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a critical and theoretical study of the development of concepts in information science. It outlines the limitations of the network metaphor and analyses the ways in which it has influenced both the development and critical understanding of the World Wide Web and its wider social and cultural consequences. The paper develops an alternative description of the ontological structure of the Web in terms of interrupted and dissipated energy flows.FindingsThe paper argues that the Web is better described as a dynamic reorganization of the socio-cultural system that has no determinate boundaries and which is constituted properly in the spaces between technologies and the spaces between persons.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to and extends research into the rhizomic nature of hypertext and the Word Wide Web and in understanding the role of metaphor in descriptions of hypertext and the web.