The account by Vasileiadou and van den Besselaar of their presentation explicitly embraces the metaphor proposed for the panel: it explores the way hyperlinks represent a formal relationship between institutions. Furthermore, the authors seek to test the possibility of intimating relations between institutions, via the inversion of this process of representation. It is very interesting to note that material presented ranges from interviews to frequency analyses. This range is of course appreciated because this panel was intended to link formal and narrative approaches to web research. But attention to the epistemological dimension of the use of these different approaches is also a crucial element. While there are always all kinds of reasons why research projects develop the way they do, the diversity of material provided by the authors points to a very important issue for cybermetrics (and internet studies). Consider that this article includes the following: intentions are elicited in interviews; hierarchies in the organisation of websites are elaborated through categorisation of levels of depth where hyperlinks can be found. This material is juxtaposed, in order to constitute the object of research in this project, in which the authors seek to reconstruct practices around hyperlinks. This object then stands between agency and structure. While the text focuses here on an empirical exploration, it is also very valuable as a demonstration of the need for reflection on the relation between practices and representations in the study of the web.