Goffman BITCHES. Rhetorical Attribution and the Perversion of Meaning

This study explores a sequence of rhetorically aggressive behavior on a Swedish parental forum as a way of attributing categories of petty value upon the opponent; while at the same time perform face saving textual activities. The\ud analysis suggests that it is not attributing a metaphor of low social value that manages to unstable the self presentation of the antagonist but rather an advanced\ud know-how of conceptual metaphors to the extent were the aggressor is able to pervert the meaning of a word. The study suggests the need for a forum account to exhibit normative responsibility only applies for some of the nicks writing, while other and more experienced ones are able to act more freely, thereby indicating a divide of rhetorical accountability and of possible identity displays needing further examination

Stepping back from crisis points : the provision and acknowledgement of support in an online suicide discussion forum

Suicide is a global health concern, though little is known about the social practices that might support those who are contemplating suicide. Online forums provide a unique insight into the anonymous discussion of suicide, including sociocultural norms about suicide and the delicate management of online interaction. This article examines the provision and acknowledgement of support in an online discussion forum about suicide, using discursive psychology to analyse the textual interaction. The analysis illustrates how forum threads function as case studies, and enable members to gain support on numerous occasions. In this way, members can gain help at crisis points as and when these occur, while still maintaining authenticity as a valid forum member. The analysis also provides additional evidence for models of suicide which highlight the fluid nature of suicidality and contributes to the preventative work on suicide by demonstrating how support can be provided at crisis points. 2 Suicidal behaviours represent a global public health concern and substantial research effort has gone into identifying specific risk and protective factors (e.g., O'Connor & Nock, 2014) . The rise of technology provides a unique opportunity to examine suicidal issues in online spaces (Mishara & Kerkhof, 2013) , yet research to date has focused mainly on the motivations and individual characteristics of those using the internet for this purpose, rather than on the social practices in the online spaces themselves. Following Horne and Wiggins (2009) and Paulus and Varga (2015), this article focuses on the provision and acknowledgement of support in an o nline suicide di scussion forum. Specifically, the aim of this article is to explicate the interactional features of support in the suicide forums, and of the potential for members to be supported by others by being metaphorically talked back from the ‘edge’; i.e., representing a shift from being at a crisis point to a stance that might still be troubled but is not immediately suicidal. As such, the article provides additional empirical support for discursive accounts of managing health identities online as well as demonstrating the potential of qualitative analyses to contribute to preventative work on suicid

Typing yourself accountable: Objectifying subjective experiences in an online health forum

In this paper, I outline linguistic and discursive practices online forum participants use to make sense of painful and disturbing bodily experiences which from the participants’ perspectives have not been explained, diagnosed and treated by medical professionals.By scrutinizing a thread from a Danish online health forum on the topic metabolism using conversation analytic perspectives, I show that participants use practices that objectify their experiences when seeking support and recognition in the forum. Four practices for objectifying experiences understood as undiagnosed symptoms of illness are outlined: (1) Presentation of problem by presenting a medical history of symptom discovery; (2) Presentation of symptoms in a list using medical terms, extreme case formulations (Pomerantz 1986), and elliptic constructions; (3) Presentation of a candidate medical cause supported by evidence and sources; and (4) Presentation of objective facts and other sources as the expected solution. It is argued that the responses, characterized by agreement and tellings of similar stories, contribute to the objectification of subjective experiences by delivering perspectives that can be used as information sources and for experience based generalization

Social support and unsolicited advice in a bipolar disorder online forum

How does a newly diagnosed user get inducted into a forum dedicated to people suffering from bipolar disorder? Is their opening message "matched" by the forum's reply? We add to the literature on social support online by using conversation analysis (CA) to explore an apparent contradiction between a new user's first post and forum members' replies with ostensibly unsolicited advice. CA reveals the intimate relation between turns in sequence, an aspect of online communication largely ignored in existing work on social support. Seen from this perspective, giving unsolicited advice, although apparently a "mismatch," turns out to be a consequence of the open design of the new user's initial posting. We speculate that such unsolicited advice might function at the ideological level to induct the new user into the mores of the group, not only in the kind of support it countenances giving, but into the very meaning of bipolarity itself

Diagnostic Work in Cloud Computing: Discussion Forums, Community and Troubleshooting

ABSTRACT As systems scale, systems management often becomes partially reliant on web forums and other social media. This paper examines the use of web forums for diagnostic work in cloud computing. We argue that forums are not simply used to communicate information but that (with users attempting to negotiate and manage the attention of providers, forming coalitions, criticizing others, and framing problems in particular ways) forums are socially organised, value laden venues for information. We conclude that providers should focus not on improving communication, but more broadly on managing community

Responses to advice-seeking on Reddit that do not give advice

Previous studies have observed that asynchronous online interaction relies on sequence organization in the same way as spoken interaction, but that its sequential implicativeness might sometimes become looser. This means that advice-seeking may be followed by something other than advice, without it being treated as problematic. This study in-vestigates such instances on Reddit, utilizing the Conversation Analytic concepts of affiliative stance and action alignment. The analysis led to two major observations. First, based on the affiliative stance, there are three ways of reacting to an advice-seeking post: accepting, negotiating, and denying the validity of the advice-seeking. Second, most re-sponses that did not align with the action did align with the overall activity or another action made relevant by the preceding message. Based on the analysis, this article offers a system for classifying responses to advice-seeking that do not give advice. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

‘What’s it like to have ME?’ The discursive construction of ME in computer-mediated communication and face-to-face interaction

ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) is a debilitating illness for which no cause or medical tests have been identified. Debates over its nature have generated interest from qualitative researchers. However, participants are difficult to recruit because of the nature of their condition. Therefore, this study explores the utility of the internet as a means of eliciting accounts. We analyse data from focus groups and the internet in order to ascertain the extent to which previous research findings apply to the internet domain. Interviews were conducted among 49 members of internet (38 chatline, 11 personal) and 7 members of two face-to-face support groups. Discourse analysis of descriptions and accounts of ME/CFS revealed similar devices and interactional concerns in both internet and face-to-face communication. Participants constructed their condition as serious, enigmatic and not psychological. These functioned to deflect problematic assumptions about ME/CFS and to manage their accountability for the illness and its effects

Analysing technological affordances of online interactions using conversation analysis

The use of conversation analysis (CA) as a method for analysing the interactional practices of online communication has been growing in recent years (Giles et al., 2015). A key challenge for analysing online communication is the varied platforms through which interaction can occur. This paper demonstrates how using CA and the concept of affordances (Hutchby, 2001) can provide a lens through which to analyse not only the interaction, but also the technological context of that interaction. A corpus of instant messaging chats, captured from Facebook chat using screen-capture software, is used as a case study to demonstrate how the concept of affordances can be used alongside CA analysis to address the role of technology in the interaction. Two key interactional practices – turn adjacency and openings – are analysed to show the insights that CA can offer for providing an in-depth analysis of online interaction. By using affordances as a lens through which CA analysis can be refracted, scholars using ‘digital CA’ can better develop an understanding of patterns of interaction across different interactional platforms