1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

72 Journalism Online
The secret lies in the suffix (section at the end) known as the
‘domain’. It is worth familiarizing yourself with the key domain
names because they can help you both identify and find web sites
and pages.
Domains are split into two key areas – one denotes geography,
the other signals the main purpose of the organization.
We have already mentioned .com. This simply stands for
‘commercial’ and denotes that the site in question is probably, but
not always, a business or commercial venture. Dotcoms started in
the United States, but have spread beyond, to the UK in
particular.
Other domains that denote the purpose of the organization
include:
.co.uk, which is UK commercial;
.edu, which is education;
.ac.uk, which is UK higher education;
.gov, which is government;
.int, which is international organizations;
.mil, which is US Department of Defense;
.net, which is networks; and
.org, which is non-commercial organizations.
The geographical codes are often more clear cut, for example .au
is Australia and .ca is Canada. However, some would be more
difficult to guess. Neither Portugal (.pt) or Poland (.pl) have the
code .po (Po is in fact is a Tellytubby with a purple friend called
Tinky Winky).
As can be seen from the list above, some domains combine the
two. The University of Central Lancashire is a University in the
UK. Its URL is uclan.ac.uk. If we break that down we can see the
following:
uclan. (University of Central Lancashire);
ac.(University domain); and
uk (uk domain).
In this instance ‘ac’ denotes the purpose and ‘uk’ denotes the
geographical location. So just by examining a simple URL such as