Conflict management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine how conflict begins, unfolds and ends in a massive, new media polylogue, specifically, a YouTube polylogue. Extant research has looked into how conflict begins, unfolds and/or ends. However, to our knowledge, the models and taxonomies developed so far have not been applied to the analysis of the mediated conflict of massive polylogues. Drawing on the difference between methods of analysis that are natively digital versus those that have been digitized, i.e., they were developed for off-line research and then migrated on-line, one of the goals of this paper is to test whether non-natively digital, extant models and taxonomies, if digitized, would …

On-line polylogues and impoliteness: The case of postings sent in response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube video

Abstract The overall aim of this paper is to investigate impoliteness in a particular on-line polylogal setting – YouTube postings (c. 13,000 words) triggered by the ‘Obama Reggaeton’ video, which was released during the 2008 US democratic primaries. This is done through integration of quantitative/qualitative analytic tools and of (im)politeness1 and (im)politeness 2 approaches. A two-prong experimental study is used in order to examine impoliteness realisation and interpretation in the corpus. Findings reveal clear patterns in the realisation of impoliteness strategies, including a preference for on-record impoliteness saliently oriented towards attacking the positive face needs of one's …

Social Interaction in YouTube Text-Based Polylogues: A Study of Coherence

Since YouTube was launched, its emblematic video-sharing facility has attracted considerable attention as a social networking system of cultural production. In addition to vlogging, YouTube offers a text facility through which YouTubers share and negotiate opinions. However, research into the latter is scarce, especially within language-based disciplines (Androutsopoulos & Beiβwenger 2009; Zelenkauskaite & Herring 2008). This article contributes to addressing this imbalance by focusing on YouTube text-based ‘conversation’ (Herring 2010a). Specifically, it examines coherence in a corpus of YouTube postings in Spanish. Although coherence has been the object of much academic debate in other fo…

Introduction to Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions

In the introduction, we have embedded our overview of the contributions to this volume within a narrative that reviews past and extant research on language and digital communication. We have taken special care to highlight the ways in which each chapter advances the field. In order to do so, we have carefully identified new methodological and empirical insights put forth by the different authors. Specifically, we have highlighted the steps contributors to this volume have taken to help establish the so-called third wave of research, and these steps point to future directions in which to expand the field of language and digital communication.

Relational work in multimodal networked interactions on Facebook

Abstract The paper argues that the notion of Relational Work (Locher and Watts 2005) needs to be expanded to be able to account for sociability in the networked interactions afforded by social platforms such as Facebook. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore how the nature of networked interactions impacts the emergence of relational practices therein. Importantly, Relational Work is a language based framework whereas networked interactions are highly multimodal. By applying Norris’ (2004) multimodal framework to the analysis of a Facebook wall event, we show how key sociability functions are carried out by semiotic modes other than language. Furthermore, the analysis shows how relation…

The pragmatics of textual participation in the social media