Compiling and analysing a large corpus of online discussions to explore users’ interactions

This methodology-focused paper reports how I compiled and analysed a 12-million-word corpus of threaded online discussions by employing Corpus Workbench tool (CWB, Evert & Hardie, 2011) and combining corpus analysis with micro-analysis drawing on the principles of digital Conversation Analysis. The tool not only affords an efficient retrieval and analysis of a large dataset, but also, more importantly, facilitates exploration of a corpus of online discussions based on different variables (e.g., topics of discussions, role of internet users, types of postings) and units of analysis (e.g., subforums, threads, postings). Examples are presented to illustrate how I used this tool to investigate various aspects of online discussions, and extract threads surrounding a particular topic or language practices for micro-analysis. I propose internet users’ interactions in online discussions can be further explored in the field of corpus linguistics by using this tool and a synergy of corpus linguistics and an interactional approach.