RSSParticipation in Public and Social Media Interactions
Nov 19
EDITOR: Marta Dynel
EDITOR: Jan Chovanec
TITLE: Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions
SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 256
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Martine van Driel, University of Birmingham
SUMMARY
(1) Preface: Researching interactional forms and participant structures in
public and social media, by Jan Chovanec and Marta Dynel
The preface focuses on an explanation of the origin of this volume, the
theoretical frameworks it is grounded in and an overview of the articles
contained inside. Chovanec and Dynel believe that with a changing media scape,
it is important that participation frameworks are altered to fit the new media
that audiences are getting involved in. They refer to Goffman’s (1981)
initial work, which came from a more sociological perspective, as well as to a
wide variety of linguistic scholars who used the framework to adopt it to the
more current diverse range of communication (among others: Hymes 1972; Bell
1984; Clark 1996).
They go on to explain their perspective on two different forms of interaction
in the participation frameworks: public media (e.g. TV) and social media; they
have included articles in both areas in this volume. Their main aim with this
volume is to address two topics: (1) “participation frameworks and
interactional phenomena in traditional public media discourses” and (2) “the
nature of participation and interaction in novel discourses arising in
computer-mediated and technology-mediated communication” (Chovanec & Dynel
2015: 10). They explain that they have ordered the articles by the authors’
approaches to participation frameworks (though they mention the articles could
also be grouped by theme: television and film discourse, news discourse and
social media), and they provide the reader with a short overview of each
chapter.
Part 1 – Reconsidering participation frameworks
Participation frameworks and participation in televised sitcom, candid camera
and stand-up comedy, by Alexander Brock
Brock’s article is focused on re-arranging existing participation frameworks
to account for the communication between TV characters (fictitious) as well as
the communication between the collective sender and the TV audience (real). He
shows how to add to existing frameworks by focusing on televised comedy,
specifically sitcoms, candid camera shows and stand-up comedy. Brock refers to
the real communication between the collective sender and the TV audience as
Communicative Level 1 (CL1) and to the fictitious communication between the
characters as Communicative Level 2 (CL2).
Brock considers many different situations in TV comedy which alter
participation frameworks, such as hecklers during a stand-up comedy show,
different camera perspectives (such as Point of View) and studio audiences
present during sitcoms. His use of CL1 and CL2 is helpful in these situations;
yet addressing such a wide variety of participation situations results in a
lack of depth in terms of how these participation frameworks change the
dynamics of audiences and producers, as well as how these participation
frameworks assist in the production of comedic moments. Both these issues are
alluded to by Brock, and he acknowledges that there is a “complexity of things
yet to discover” (45).
(2) Participation structures in Twitter interaction: Arguing for the
broadcaster role, by Fawn Draucker
Draucker’s paper focuses on Goffman’s (1981) theory of three different
production roles: (1) the animator as the participant who “produces the talk
in its physical form” (p 50), (2) the author who wrote the words and (3) the
principal whose ideas are expressed in the words. Draucker argues that when we
analyse Twitter, we should incorporate a fourth role: the broadcaster. She
defines this role as “a ‘followable’ party that makes talk available to
recipients” (p 63).
The role of broadcaster is different from any of the three other roles
described by Goffman (1981) as it can re-distribute previously written tweets
(with its own author, animator and principal) in the form of re-tweets. In
that case, the followable party or the broadcaster, is still considered an
active participant, Draucker argues, as they can be held accountable for the
content of what they re-tweet. The role of broadcaster is also applicable in
the case of company accounts, where one person in the company might be the
animator, author and principal, while the company as a whole will be the
distributor of the tweet through their Twitter account.
Draucker has also included previous research into computer-mediated discourse,
which forms the basis of her idea that the broadcaster is an active
participant in Twitter communication.
(3) Participant roles and embedded interactions in online sports broadcasts,
by Jan Chovanec
Chovanec builds his paper around “Goffman’s (1981) observation that much of
human talk contains embedded instances of prior talk” (p 68). He has taken
this observation and applied it to online sports broadcasts. In his analysis,
he employs frames of interaction based on Fetzer (2006) which reflect the
different levels of interaction. For example in a television broadcast of an
interviewer, the first frame will include the interviewer and interviewee as
well as the studio audience. The second frame is the audience watching at home
and will envelope that first frame. Chovanec’s analysis contains four frames:
(1) the football match, (2) the television broadcast studio, (3) the audience
at home and the online studio, (4) the online recipients. His analysis focuses
on how the interactions within each frame as well as across frames are
represented in the online commentary.
Chovanec’s analysis leads to two main conclusions: (1) embedding leads to a
one-way flow of communication, meaning the final at home audience cannot
interact with the interviewee on screen, but (2) with modern technology it is
possible that final recipients can temporarily enter into a production role,
through online commentary for example. According to Chocanec this reflects the
trend of “participatory journalism” which includes audiences in the production
of media communication.
Part 2 – Participation and interpersonal pragmatics
Troubles talk, (dis) affiliation and the participation order in
Taiwanese-Chinese online discussion boards, by Michael Haugh and Wei-Lin
Melody Chang
Haugh and Chang have analysed a Taiwanese-Chinese online discussion board on
‘mom talk’. Their interest lies in how participants on these forums understand
their roles in the participation order as well as the moral order. By looking
at how participants respond to ‘troubles talk’ which they define as “the
expression of some degree of dissatisfaction or discontent with a particular
situation (…) followed by (dis) affiliation with those troubles by a recipient
(Jefferson 1988)” (p 102). Haugh and Chang lay out three types of talk found
on online discussion boards with interlinked preferred responses: (1) troubles
talk, (2) soliciting advice and (3) complaining.
They explain that participants displaying troubles talk have a preferred
response of displaying emotional reciprocity but can sometimes encounter
dispreferred responses of giving advice (preferred response to soliciting
advice) or blaming or accusing (dispreferred response to complaining).
Their analysis shows that participants show emotional reciprocity through
“mutual encouragement”, “mutual bemoaning” and “empathic suggesting”; however
a small number of responses showed accusing and advising. Whereas in English
culture this can be seen as face threatening, in Chinese culture giving advice
is seen as a supportive response. This leads Huang and Chang to suggest that
more work needs to be done in non-Western computer-mediated communication
(CMC) in order to create the metalanguage to deal with these different
cultural responses appropriately.
(2) Humour in microblogging: Exploiting linguistic humour strategies for
identity construction in two Facebook focus groups, by Miriam A. Locher and
Brook Bolander
Locher and Bolander have analysed status updates on Facebook from two groups:
10 students and young professional living in Switzerland, and 10 UK students.
Their aim was to explore how these participants use humour and how that humour
is used to create their identity. Locher and Bolander start by reviewing
previous research on identity creation on (mainly) social media as well as
briefly investigating how to define humour. Though they never clearly state
their working definition of humour, they explain in their methodology that
they decided what was humorous based on “clear evidence through linguistic
means” and “background knowledge that warranted the status update to be taken
humorously” (p 143).
Through their analysis they identify ten types of humour. The most common
types being (1) appeal to shared knowledge, (2) irony, (3) word play and (4)
self-deprecation. Not all these uses of humour were responded to and used in
co-creating a group identity, but as Locher and Bolander state, since the
statuses are published on a semi-public domain (Facebook) they are intended
for an audience and therefore some form of identity creation. They also argue
for the importance of studying the use of humour over time as one humorous
status update will not lead to the creation of a humorous identity.
The researchers also identified five categories of identity creation: (1)
personality, (2) pastime, (3) humour, (4) work and (5) relationship claims.
Within each of the two groups (Swiss and UK) the individuals used these five
identity claims differently. Locher and Bolander conclude that though
differences could be found in their data, the technological advances that
Facebook has made since their data collection in 2008 make it necessary for
more research to be done.
(3) Impoliteness in the service of verisimilitude in film interaction by Marta
Dynel
Dynel’s paper is the first paper in this collection to take a more theoretical
approach, focusing on impoliteness in film interaction. She draws on the
participation framework to separate the two communicative levels of film: (1)
the inter-character level and (2) the recipient level. The inter-character
level follows similar communicative behaviours as nonfictional situations,
meaning that face threatening acts on this level can be considered impolite by
the hearer (on the same level), whereas the recipient (the TV audience) might
consider face threatening acts on the first level not as impoliteness but as a
form of entertainment depending on the “inferential path devised by the
collective sender” (p 159).
Through examples from the TV-series House, Dynel shows how the impoliteness of
House (the main character) is linked to his power, both his expert power (he
is the best diagnostician) and his legitimate power (he has subordinates) and
how his impoliteness has different responses on each communicative level. She
argues that even though on the inter-character level the impoliteness is
neutralised as part of House’s personality and on the recipient level the
impoliteness is classed as entertainment (this is first-order impoliteness),
researchers can still classify his behaviour as second-order impoliteness.
House’s impoliteness acts are not unmarked, she argues therefore are similar
to how even in close relationships, candor can be viewed as impoliteness.
(4) “That’s none of your business, Sy”: The pragmatics of vocatives in film
dialogue by Raffaele Zago
Zago’s paper continues on a topic similar to Dynel’s, as it looks at the
pragmatics of vocatives both on the inter-character level and on the recipient
level. He starts by giving an overview of English vocatives as well as the
pragmatics of vocatives in film dialogue. The latter details methodologies
used in the past as well as research outcomes. Zago then goes on to
investigate different pragmatic functions and positions of vocatives in
Sliding Doors (SD), One Hour Photo (OHP) and Erin Brockovich (EB). Zago
selected these three films because they contain a variety of interactions.
On the inter-character level, Zago found that the use of vocatives mimics
natural conversation. Vocatives are mainly used as “relational, attitudinal
and expressive” rather than “in their identifying role” (p 203). He also found
the use of vocatives particularly high in confrontational situations; these he
labelled “adversarial vocatives” (p 203). Finally, they also mimic natural
conversation when they are used in the final-position, thereby increasing the
illocutionary force of the sentence.
On the recipient level, Zago found four functions of vocatives: (1) they
simulate natural spoken discourse thereby increasing the viewer’s suspension
of disbelief, (2) they increase “conversation dynamicity”, (3) they foreground
certain segments of dialogue by drawing attention to whom each character is
speaking, and (4) they foreground whole scenes in cases where they are
overused.
Part 3 – Forms of participation
A participation perspective on television evening news in the age of immediacy
by Linda Lombardo
Lombardo’s paper is the first to focus on television news media in this
volume. TV news is still “among the most influential knowledge producing
institutions of our time” (Ekstrom 2002: 274) and is developing constantly to
grow along with the trend towards “communicating effectively” and with
“improvisation and conversation as preferred mode of delivery” (p 212).
Lombardo then compiled a corpus of BBC evening news programmes and is
analysing the reporter – news presenter exchanges through a participation
framework perspective. This dialogic exchange, she says, is performed on
behalf of the audience and includes a ‘liveness’ as it takes the form of a
conversation.
This ‘liveness’ in the reporter-news presenter exchanges is decreasing though
as Lombardo’s corpus shows. The exchanges are shortening with “less discourse
in a conversational mode” (p 229). This is replaced by a quick switches
between news items and the inclusion of live links and invitations to visit
the website and participate in the news through comments. Lombardo argues that
these changes could have a negative effect on the TV audience as there is less
chance for a full understanding of the news event.
She then draws again on Goffman’s (1981) participation framework, stating that
the TV audience is positioned as a “ratified hearer/observer” in the news
presenter – reporter exchanges and, with the directions to the website, is
more and more becoming a “full recipient who can take on a (limited) role in
producing language” (p 229).
(2) What I can (re)make out of it: Incoherence, non-cohesion, and
re-interpretation in YouTube video responses by Elisabetta Adami
Adami’s paper focuses on video responses on YouTube and how cohesion and
coherence are present in them. As YouTube videos allow participants to use a
variety of multimodal resources for response which can result in only loosely
related responses, Adami argues that a framework should be developed to
“account for marginally related exchanges” (p 234). She follows Kress’s
definition that “communication is always a response by one participant to a
prompt” (2010; p 235). Therefore even responses that are not explicitly
cohesive with the initial video can still be analysed as cohesive and coherent
in some way.
Adami analysed 613 video responses to one of YouTube ‘most responded to’
videos entitled ‘best video ever’. The responses, she argues, can be tracked
along “a relatedness continuum” (p 254) which ranges from “fully cohesive and
attuned responses” through four other categories to responses that display “no
explicit or implicit clues of relatedness with the initiating video” (p 254).
With such a wide range of responses, Adami states that the success of a video
does no longer depend on the author’s intended meaning, but instead on its
“prompting potential” (p 255).
Finally she argues that sign-making through the different copy-and-paste
methods participants use in their video responses is influencing what is
accepted as explicit and implicit cohesiveness and calls for further research.
This research will also need to take into account the changing, multimodal
form of online participation, which is creating more focus on
individualisation over community. Perhaps a redefinition of community is
necessary in further research.
(3) Enhancing citizen engagement: Political weblogs and participatory
democracy by Giorgia Riboni
Riboni’s paper investigates the difference between American political weblogs
run by political parties and those run by citizens. Weblogs have been able to
fill a gap in the market by favouring participation, helping to mobilise
opinions and helping to organise citizens’ activities (p 260). Blogs run by
citizens especially are subjective and mainly represent solely the viewpoint
of the author. This is in contrast with blogs run by political parties who
tend to represent the party as a whole rather than one individual. Riboni then
adopts a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to identify
these differences and how these different blogs represented the 2008 American
elections.
She collected data from 10 citizen political blogs selected by popularity and
from 10 party political blogs selected by their “political creed” (p 263).
With 10,000 tokens taken from each blog, Riboni’s corpus consisted of 200,000
tokens.
Riboni’s analysis focuses on the use of pronouns, both first person singular
and first person plural and finally the discursive construction of the
candidates through the blogs. She shows that citizens’ blogs use more first
person singular pronouns and represent their own ideology in their blogs.
Party blogs use some first person singular pronouns, for example when posts
are written by a member of congress who shares their experience in congress.
They mainly use first person plural pronouns though, as they are representing
the collective party and want to include the audience in that party. Riboni
concludes by showing that the citizen bloggers tended to represent Obama and
McCain (the two presidential candidates) through personal characteristics,
whereas party blogs focused on their political programmes.
EVALUATION
Dynel and Chovanec clearly set out the aims of this volume in the preface;
they are to investigate (1) “participation frameworks and interactional
phenomena in traditional public media discourses” and (2) “the nature of
participation and interaction in novel discourses arising in computer-mediated
and technology-mediated communication” (p 10). A quick answer to whether they
have achieved those aims is yes. In each of the three parts, they give an
opportunity to both scholars in traditional media and scholars in newer media
to adjust existing participation frameworks as well as to propose new ideas.
The traditional media discussed ranges from TV news to film, and while these
topics have been thoroughly discussed in other work, the papers in this volume
are able to give new insight into these media. They do this specifically by
focusing on under-explored parts of Goffman’s (1981) participation framework
(e.g. Brock in Chapter 2), or by focusing on the changes in the media due to
technological advances (e.g. Lombardo in Chapter 9).
The newer media discussed in this volume includes both commonly discussed
media such as Facebook and Twitter, and also less common media such as YouTube
video responses and political weblogs. Especially in the new media chapters,
the variety of methods is striking: corpus linguistics, critical discourse
analysis and multimodality to name a few. This use of a wide variety of
methodologies strengthens the book and its representation of current research
into new media.
Though the volume is coherent in its topic, Dynel’s own paper seems to not fit
as well as other chapters. Although all the articles are related to the topic,
Dynel’s paper is more theoretical than the others. Perhaps the addition of
another more theoretical paper would have made a difference and would at the
same time have added a new perspective on participation in both public and
social media. There is a lot of practical, analysis work in this field, and
more theoretical work like Dynel’s chapter would be a great addition.
I recommend this volume to researchers in both participation and media
research fields. Dynel and Chovanec have successfully integrated these two
research areas, including methodologies and theoretical background from both
fields. As interdisciplinary research is growing, this volume shows how well
different fields can work together.
REFERENCES
Bell, A. 1984. Language Style as Audience Design. Language in Society 13:
145-204.
Clark, H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ekstrom, M. 2002. Epistemologies of TV Journalism: A Theoretical Framework.
Journalism 3(3): 259-282.
Fetzer, A. 2006. ‘Minister, We will see How the Public Judges You’. Media
references in political interviews. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 180-195.
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia
Press.
Hymes, D. 1972. Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life. In
Directions in Sociolinguistics: the Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John
Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 35-71. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Jefferson, G. 1988. On the Sequential Organisation of Troubles Talk in
Ordinary Conversation. Social Problems 35(4): 418-441.
Kress, G. 2010. Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London: Routledge.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Martine van Driel is a PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her PhD research focuses on new forms of news media and reader response. Other research interests include: political discourse, multimodality, speech and thought presentation and gender and identity research.
She is a member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) and has recently presented reader response data of readers of news live blogs at the annual PALA conference at the University of Kent (UK).
Aside her PhD, she is working on articles on multimodality, political tweets and radio interviews.
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