Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100864
Simon Perry
This paper explores YouTube Language Influencers (YTLIs) in the online linguistic marketplace. Utilizing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of linguistic capital and the linguistic marketplace, it investigates how YTLIs assert power and convert linguistic capital into economic and social gains. Through critical discourse analysis, the study examines the discursive strategies of YTLIs, focusing on symbolic imagery, persuasive language, and indexical markers. Findings reveal that YTLIs leverage national and cultural symbols, educational imagery, emotive content, and native accents to enhance their authority and marketability, thereby influencing linguistic and cultural norms. The research underscores the significant role of YTLIs in shaping digital language learning environments and highlights the complex interplay of power dynamics and capital conversion within these online spaces. Understanding these dynamics helps us foster informed media consumption, promotes access to reliable linguistic resources, and reveals the socio-economic impacts of digital influence on cultural and educational practices.
{"title":"The linguistic marketplace of YouTube language influencers","authors":"Simon Perry","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100864","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100864","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores YouTube Language Influencers (YTLIs) in the online linguistic marketplace. Utilizing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of linguistic capital and the linguistic marketplace, it investigates how YTLIs assert power and convert linguistic capital into economic and social gains. Through critical discourse analysis, the study examines the discursive strategies of YTLIs, focusing on symbolic imagery, persuasive language, and indexical markers. Findings reveal that YTLIs leverage national and cultural symbols, educational imagery, emotive content, and native accents to enhance their authority and marketability, thereby influencing linguistic and cultural norms. The research underscores the significant role of YTLIs in shaping digital language learning environments and highlights the complex interplay of power dynamics and capital conversion within these online spaces. Understanding these dynamics helps us foster informed media consumption, promotes access to reliable linguistic resources, and reveals the socio-economic impacts of digital influence on cultural and educational practices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100864"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100851
Kate O’Farrell
This study addresses a gap in research on media bias in news coverage, focusing on how news consumers engage with the issue. Using online news site comment sections, the study examines how commenters discuss the issue of Missing White Woman Syndrome, referring to the heightened coverage of cases involving young, white, middle-class women. The study employs a novel approach in applying corpusbased methods for discourse analysis, using 5-grams to identify broader patterns of discourse in the dataset. The Appraisal framework and (de)legitimation are applied to analyse the identified themes in more detail. The study finds that social categories are invoked in order to raise the issue of media bias within the comment sections. However, the study reveals that the media interest is legitimated by other commenters, who attribute the coverage to other elements of the stories, or delegitimate the discussion of prejudice through accusations against those who raise the issue of incivility. Consequently, the conversation around media bias is contracted and the issue constructed as irrelevant.
{"title":"Discursive (de)legitimation of media bias in news reporting of high-profile crimes: The case of Missing White Woman Syndrome","authors":"Kate O’Farrell","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100851","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100851","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study addresses a gap in research on media bias in news coverage, focusing on how news consumers engage with the issue. Using online news site comment sections, the study examines how commenters discuss the issue of Missing White Woman Syndrome, referring to the heightened coverage of cases involving young, white, middle-class women. The study employs a novel approach in applying corpusbased methods for discourse analysis, using 5-grams to identify broader patterns of discourse in the dataset. The Appraisal framework and (de)legitimation are applied to analyse the identified themes in more detail. The study finds that social categories are invoked in order to raise the issue of media bias within the comment sections. However, the study reveals that the media interest is legitimated by other commenters, who attribute the coverage to other elements of the stories, or delegitimate the discussion of prejudice through accusations against those who raise the issue of incivility. Consequently, the conversation around media bias is contracted and the issue constructed as irrelevant.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100851"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100865
Huimin Xu , Csilla Weninger
While there is a sizable body of scholarship on China’s social media and digital culture, including discourse-analytic studies, research into more contentious forms of discourse or how the internet and new technologies facilitate digital activism on the Chinese internet has remained sparse. This is especially true for newer types of platforms such as those built around short-form videos. This study takes the recent #Pro-Cantonese movement (PCM) on Douyin as a case study to investigate how users employ various technological and semiotic affordances to position themselves in response to the platform’s surveillance of Cantonese content. Using a critical multimodal approach, we analyzed 264 short videos under the hashtag #PCM posted between 1 September 2022 to 31 March 2023. Five distinct positions were identified within the PCM: radical activists, playful activists, positive energy patriots, rational experts, and cultural ambassadors. These results contribute to our understanding of the multi-faceted forms of everyday activism in China’s digital spheres and shed light on the sociocultural, technological, economic-political logics of platform culture in contemporary China.
{"title":"Digital resistance against linguistic invisibility: Discursive positionings of resistance in the #Pro-Cantonese movement on Douyin","authors":"Huimin Xu , Csilla Weninger","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100865","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100865","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While there is a sizable body of scholarship on China’s social media and digital culture, including discourse-analytic studies, research into more contentious forms of discourse or how the internet and new technologies facilitate digital activism on the Chinese internet has remained sparse. This is especially true for newer types of platforms such as those built around short-form videos. This study takes the recent #Pro-Cantonese movement (PCM) on Douyin as a case study to investigate how users employ various technological and semiotic affordances to position themselves in response to the platform’s surveillance of Cantonese content. Using a critical multimodal approach, we analyzed 264 short videos under the hashtag #PCM posted between 1 September 2022 to 31 March 2023. Five distinct positions were identified within the PCM: radical activists, playful activists, positive energy patriots, rational experts, and cultural ambassadors. These results contribute to our understanding of the multi-faceted forms of everyday activism in China’s digital spheres and shed light on the sociocultural, technological, economic-political logics of platform culture in contemporary China.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100865"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-18DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100850
Luanying Li , Xiaoping Wu
In recent years, digital and social media technologies have played an increasingly important role in challenging traditional gender norms and promoting gender equality and more diverse gender expression in China. This study examines the construction of resistant gender identities by male internet influencers through a case study of videos by male beauty vloggers posted on Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing website. Drawing upon a social semiotic multimodal approach to social media and an evaluative attribute framework, this study analyzes 83 videos by popular Chinese male beauty vloggers. The analysis highlights three levels at which male beauty vloggers construct resistance identities, namely resisting stereotypical masculinity, challenging traditional gender-based occupational discrimination, and confronting heterosexual hegemony. The study contributes to the growing research on gender discourses shaped by social media technologies and a more nuanced understanding of Chinese masculinity in the digital sphere. It also provides methodological implications for analyzing video data on social media.
{"title":"Constructing resistant gender identities on Chinese social media: A multimodal discourse analysis of Chinese male beauty vloggers’ videos on Bilibili","authors":"Luanying Li , Xiaoping Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100850","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100850","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, digital and social media technologies have played an increasingly important role in challenging traditional gender norms and promoting gender equality and more diverse gender expression in China. This study examines the construction of resistant gender identities by male internet influencers through a case study of videos by male beauty vloggers posted on <em>Bilibili</em>, a popular Chinese video-sharing website. Drawing upon a social semiotic multimodal approach to social media and an evaluative attribute framework, this study analyzes 83 videos by popular Chinese male beauty vloggers. The analysis highlights three levels at which male beauty vloggers construct resistance identities, namely resisting stereotypical masculinity, challenging traditional gender-based occupational discrimination, and confronting heterosexual hegemony. The study contributes to the growing research on gender discourses shaped by social media technologies and a more nuanced understanding of Chinese masculinity in the digital sphere. It also provides methodological implications for analyzing video data on social media.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100850"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-18DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100863
Helen Andersson
Self-tracking technologies have created new conditions for self-management and self-control. Research has shown how these technologies and their design are shaped by ideological assumptions and norms, particularly in their interactions with users. However, less attention has been given to the interplay between interface design, user interaction, and meaning making, especially in the context of food and health. This article uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore how the interface design of a commercial calorie-tracking app, along with the actions it enables, constructs and reinforces health and healthy eating as scientific practices. It also highlights how healthy eating is framed as something the user must choose, control, adapt, take responsibility for, and improve. Through interface design choices, commercial actors can sustain and reproduce ideas and ideologies linked to nutritionism, wellness and neoliberalism, while simultaneously benefiting from them.
{"title":"Recontextualizing a healthy lifestyle through interface design: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lifesum app","authors":"Helen Andersson","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100863","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2025.100863","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Self-tracking technologies have created new conditions for self-management and self-control. Research has shown how these technologies and their design are shaped by ideological assumptions and norms, particularly in their interactions with users. However, less attention has been given to the interplay between interface design, user interaction, and meaning making, especially in the context of food and health. This article uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore how the interface design of a commercial calorie-tracking app, along with the actions it enables, constructs and reinforces health and healthy eating as scientific practices. It also highlights how healthy eating is framed as something the user must choose, control, adapt, take responsibility for, and improve. Through interface design choices, commercial actors can sustain and reproduce ideas and ideologies linked to nutritionism, wellness and neoliberalism, while simultaneously benefiting from them.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100863"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-10DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100849
Elisabeth Muth Andersen
This paper investigates how Tinder users in Denmark interactionally generate invitations to meet through post-match chats. Based on a collection of 194 Tinder chats collected in 2020, from which 19 examples involving invitations were identified and analyzed using methodology inspired by Conversation Analysis focusing on the strategies used to navigate the delicate process of proposing a meeting.
The paper analyzed three ways of generating invitations interactionally: 1) interpreting response time as an indicator of interest, where quick replies are taken as signs of engagement and willingness to meet; 2) basing the invitation on contextually favorable conditions, such as weather or proximity, which are framed as low-effort and convenient for the recipient; and 3) utilizing self-disclosure to propose meeting activities that align with the recipient’s preferences or personal information revealed during the chat.
These strategies allow users to test the waters before asking for a meeting, thus minimizing the likelihood of rejection. By treating invitations as collaborative actions, where the recipient’s interest is implied rather than directly solicited, users manage the potential social risks involved in proposing face-to-face interactions. The findings highlight the unique affordances of Tinder as a platform, such as timestamps and geolocation features, which shape the way invitations are constructed and understood. This study contributes to existing research on digital communication by showing how invitations in online dating are interactionally achieved through subtle, recipient-designed strategies that exploit the app’s features while preserving face and mitigating social risks.
{"title":"“So fast on the keys, when do you have time to meet”: Interactionally generated invitations in Danish Tinder chats","authors":"Elisabeth Muth Andersen","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100849","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100849","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates how Tinder users in Denmark interactionally generate invitations to meet through post-match chats. Based on a collection of 194 Tinder chats collected in 2020, from which 19 examples involving invitations were identified and analyzed using methodology inspired by Conversation Analysis focusing on the strategies used to navigate the delicate process of proposing a meeting.</div><div>The paper analyzed three ways of generating invitations interactionally: 1) interpreting response time as an indicator of interest, where quick replies are taken as signs of engagement and willingness to meet; 2) basing the invitation on contextually favorable conditions, such as weather or proximity, which are framed as low-effort and convenient for the recipient; and 3) utilizing self-disclosure to propose meeting activities that align with the recipient’s preferences or personal information revealed during the chat.</div><div>These strategies allow users to test the waters before asking for a meeting, thus minimizing the likelihood of rejection. By treating invitations as collaborative actions, where the recipient’s interest is implied rather than directly solicited, users manage the potential social risks involved in proposing face-to-face interactions. The findings highlight the unique affordances of Tinder as a platform, such as timestamps and geolocation features, which shape the way invitations are constructed and understood. This study contributes to existing research on digital communication by showing how invitations in online dating are interactionally achieved through subtle, recipient-designed strategies that exploit the app’s features while preserving face and mitigating social risks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"64 ","pages":"Article 100849"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-20DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100836
Jenia Yudytska
This paper investigates the influence of communication device on linguistic variation across two levels of scale. Drawing on the notion of affordances (Hutchby, 2001), it explores how technological differences between the computer and smartphone may shape, without ultimately determining, the use of graphic features. To do so, the empirical study uses the methodological approach of ‘scaling down’ the analysis of two features across device types: first letter capitalisation and emoji. The first step of analysis is purely quantitative, focusing on linguistic variation in a corpus of a million messages from Twitter (now X). The second step of analysis uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the same features within several thousand messages, by two known participants, across the platforms Twitter and Discord. Thus, the study integrates initial results from a large, anonymous corpus with a much smaller but more detailed one. Overall, device affordances are found to influence feature use; however, statistical tendencies regarding variation across device type do not necessarily hold true for each dimension of context or individual. The combination of different scales thus leads to a more thorough understanding of the influence of technology on linguistic variation and its limits in favour of contextual factors and individual preferences.
{"title":"The interaction of technological affordances and user preferences: A corpus-based study of graphic features across Twitter and Discord","authors":"Jenia Yudytska","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100836","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100836","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the influence of communication device on linguistic variation across two levels of scale. Drawing on the notion of affordances (<span><span>Hutchby, 2001</span></span>), it explores how technological differences between the computer and smartphone may shape, without ultimately determining, the use of graphic features. To do so, the empirical study uses the methodological approach of ‘scaling down’ the analysis of two features across device types: first letter capitalisation and emoji. The first step of analysis is purely quantitative, focusing on linguistic variation in a corpus of a million messages from Twitter (now X). The second step of analysis uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the same features within several thousand messages, by two known participants, across the platforms Twitter and Discord. Thus, the study integrates initial results from a large, anonymous corpus with a much smaller but more detailed one. Overall, device affordances are found to influence feature use; however, statistical tendencies regarding variation across device type do not necessarily hold true for each dimension of context or individual. The combination of different scales thus leads to a more thorough understanding of the influence of technology on linguistic variation<!--> <!-->and its limits in favour of contextual factors and individual preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"62 ","pages":"Article 100836"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142701133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-15DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100833
Maria Grazia Sindoni
Intelligent Voice Assistants (IVAs), such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Assistant, have been mainstreamed as female by default, through voices, avatars, colour palette, and conversational cues. Even though tech companies tend to justify this systematic feminization on customers’ preferences, the ingrained gender biases have been raising concerns about the normalization of gendered, abusive, and toxic discourse practices.
In this paper, a multimodal critical discourse approach, combined with feminist philosophy, and notions of ‘digital domesticity’ will be applied to analyse examples of IVA’s coded responses, as well as personification and anthropomorphic conversational cues. The analysis aims to uncover the companies’ hidden ideologies as they emerge from coded (i.e., pre-established) conversational practices (i.e., what IVAs are expected to say to engage users) in response to users’ prompts that gender, sexualize, and ultimately harass IVAs – a practice that hard-wires women and subservience. The paper seeks to advance understanding of the intersection of design interface of IVAs with reference to the ideological gendering of IVAs, actively pursued by companies to increase user engagement.
{"title":"The femininization of AI-powered voice assistants: Personification, anthropomorphism and discourse ideologies","authors":"Maria Grazia Sindoni","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100833","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100833","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Intelligent Voice Assistants (IVAs), such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Assistant, have been mainstreamed as female by default, through voices, avatars, colour palette, and conversational cues. Even though tech companies tend to justify this systematic feminization on customers’ preferences, the ingrained gender biases have been raising concerns about the normalization of gendered, abusive, and toxic discourse practices.</div><div>In this paper, a multimodal critical discourse approach, combined with feminist philosophy, and notions of ‘digital domesticity’ will be applied to analyse examples of IVA’s coded responses, as well as personification and anthropomorphic conversational cues. The analysis aims to uncover the companies’ hidden ideologies as they emerge from coded (i.e., pre-established) conversational practices (i.e., what IVAs are expected to say to engage users) in response to users’ prompts that gender, sexualize, and ultimately harass IVAs – a practice that hard-wires women and subservience. The paper seeks to advance understanding of the intersection of design interface of IVAs with reference to the ideological gendering of IVAs, actively pursued by companies to increase user engagement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"62 ","pages":"Article 100833"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142658496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-29DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100817
Jannis Androutsopoulos
Drawing on research on graphic contextualization cues in punctuation and typography, this paper describes a three-stage, mixed-methods approach to digital discourse analysis. It introduces the terms ‘scale’ and ‘scaling’ as methodological metaphors for a researcher’s planned, yet contingent movement through formations of digital textual data that differ in terms of volume, method of collection, processing, and analysis. ‘Scaling-as-method’ aims to replace static binaries (such as ‘micro’ and ‘macro’, ‘small’ and ‘big’ data, ‘manual’ and ‘automated’ processing) by the vision of a researcher who shifts their degree of abstraction, or ‘distance’, towards digital data, while moving from close to distant reading and back again. The paper exemplifies this three-stage process on the example of the indignation mark, aka <!!1>, a twist on the iterated exclamation mark that is attested in digital discourse in various languages as a cue of double-voicing. The explorative examination of a small dataset (Stage 1) leads to the computational collection and distributional analysis of a much larger dataset (‘scaling up’, Stage 2), followed by the manual annotation of a selected subset of this data (‘scaling down’, Stage 3). Each stage draws on a different amount of data, which enables different techniques of processing and analysis, and relies on a specific combination of abductive, deductive, and inductive reasoning. Yet all three stages complement one another in a kaleidoscopic way towards understanding connections between punctuation practices and participatory political discourse online. Scaling as method is not a closed recipe, but an adaptable procedure that can be applied to a variety of discrete digital features. It does not aim to replace established methods of computational social media analysis, but to boost research that is predominantly based on the manual collection and annotation of social media data, and to enables a dialogue between multiple understandings of context.
{"title":"Scaling as method: A three-stage, mixed-methods approach to digital discourse analysis","authors":"Jannis Androutsopoulos","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100817","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100817","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drawing on research on graphic contextualization cues in punctuation and typography, this paper describes a three-stage, mixed-methods approach to digital discourse analysis. It introduces the terms ‘scale’ and ‘scaling’ as methodological metaphors for a researcher’s planned, yet contingent movement through formations of digital textual data that differ in terms of volume, method of collection, processing, and analysis. ‘Scaling-as-method’ aims to replace static binaries (such as ‘micro’ and ‘macro’, ‘small’ and ‘big’ data, ‘manual’ and ‘automated’ processing) by the vision of a researcher who shifts their degree of abstraction, or ‘distance’, towards digital data, while moving from close to distant reading and back again. The paper exemplifies this three-stage process on the example of the indignation mark, aka <!!1>, a twist on the iterated exclamation mark that is attested in digital discourse in various languages as a cue of double-voicing. The explorative examination of a small dataset (Stage 1) leads to the computational collection and distributional analysis of a much larger dataset (‘scaling up’, Stage 2), followed by the manual annotation of a selected subset of this data (‘scaling down’, Stage 3). Each stage draws on a different amount of data, which enables different techniques of processing and analysis, and relies on a specific combination of abductive, deductive, and inductive reasoning. Yet all three stages complement one another in a kaleidoscopic way towards understanding connections between punctuation practices and participatory political discourse online. Scaling as method is not a closed recipe, but an adaptable procedure that can be applied to a variety of discrete digital features. It does not aim to replace established methods of computational social media analysis, but to boost research that is predominantly based on the manual collection and annotation of social media data, and to enables a dialogue between multiple understandings of context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"62 ","pages":"Article 100817"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142539109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-28DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100835
Wei Ren, Yufei Li
Online sharing has emerged as a pivotal means for individuals, particularly those facing challenges, to seek support. This study investigates how second stories are employed to comfort original posters in online support groups. Data were collected from two distinct online support groups, related to exam failures and relationship issues respectively, on the Chinese social media platform Douban, with 100 interactive segments from each group. We also examine whether thematic contexts shape the types and perspectives of second stories. The findings identified three types of second stories in the online comforting interactions, namely aligned, prospective, and divergent second stories. Netizens shared their personal experiences much more frequently than the experiences of others in their second stories, and the themes of the online groups significantly influenced the choices and perspectives of the second stories. In addition, the study details the dynamics of interactions between the original posters and those who replied, highlighting a spectrum of engagement levels from single responses to circular, linear, and multi-party interactions. These findings demonstrate the adaptive and context-sensitive nature of sharing second stories online in providing targeted emotional support within digital communities.
{"title":"Sharing second stories in online comforting interactions","authors":"Wei Ren, Yufei Li","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100835","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcm.2024.100835","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Online sharing has emerged as a pivotal means for individuals, particularly those facing challenges, to seek support. This study investigates how second stories are employed to comfort original posters in online support groups. Data were collected from two distinct online support groups, related to exam failures and relationship issues respectively, on the Chinese social media platform <em>Douban</em>, with 100 interactive segments from each group. We also examine whether thematic contexts shape the types and perspectives of second stories. The findings identified three types of second stories in the online comforting interactions, namely aligned, prospective, and divergent second stories. Netizens shared their personal experiences much more frequently than the experiences of others in their second stories, and the themes of the online groups significantly influenced the choices and perspectives of the second stories. In addition, the study details the dynamics of interactions between the original posters and those who replied, highlighting a spectrum of engagement levels from single responses to circular, linear, and multi-party interactions. These findings demonstrate the adaptive and context-sensitive nature of sharing second stories online in providing targeted emotional support within digital communities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"62 ","pages":"Article 100835"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142527795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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