Economic Libertarians and the Hyperlink: A Preliminary Investigation into an Ideological Practice

Use of the Internet by activists is part of contemporary politics, yet we understand little about the way in which this use is related to ideological production. This paper describes the basis for and discusses an on-going research project in its early stages that seeks to understand the use of hyperlinks to create meaning on the World Wide Web. It particularly focuses on the way in which economic libertarians in the U.S. have provided links to the web pages of likeminded individuals. I theorize these links as a social practice that is informing the way in which property rights are being understood by a highly influential group of lawyers and legal activists in the U.S. Through an analysis of the links found on the web pages of lawyers who have been working to advance a free market vision of property and economic rights, I speculate on a way to understand hyperlinking as meaning creation.Several people have assisted this research in various ways and deserve to be thanked. Heath Mills, my gradute assistant at Northern Illinois University spent many hours looking at and documenting web pages. I also wish to thank the members of the International Roundtable on Law and Semiotics, which met in Amherst, Massachusetts in April 2003, for their wonderful helpful comments.Finally, thanks to Brigham for always supporting my work and providing insightful commentary; and to Taag Ebert for patiently helping me translate the language of computer engineering into the language of political science and language studies.