30.199, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Farina (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-199. Mon Jan 14 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.199, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Farina (2018)

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Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:33:09
From: Agnese Sampietro [agnese.sampietro at uv.es]
Subject: Facebook and Conversation Analysis

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-1967.html

AUTHOR: Matteo  Farina
TITLE: Facebook and Conversation Analysis
SUBTITLE: The Structure and Organization of Comment Threads
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Agnese Sampietro, Universitat Jaume I

SUMMARY

The last two decades have witnessed a steady increase in research on
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). However, there is a need for studies
that apply Conversation Analysis (CA) methods to online corpora. Even though
CA has already been used to analyze online interactions, the field of “digital
CA” (Giles, Stommel, Paulus, Lester & Reed 2015), “is still in its infancy
when compared to spoken CA” (Meredith 2017: 42). “Facebook and Conversation
Analysis” by Matteo Farina is a timely contribution to research to this young
yet evolving field. The book is an in-depth analysis of a corpus of Facebook
(FB) comment threads, mostly written in Italian, applying concepts of CA.
Concretely, it focuses on the structure and sequence organization of FB
comment threads.

The book is divided into nine chapters. After a general introduction,
description of the corpus, and presentation of the research design (Chapters 1
and 2), the author analyzes the specific features of comment threads (Chapter
3) and recognizes tellings as the basic sequences of FB comments (Chapter 4).
The following two chapters describe the interactional characteristics of
first-post tellings and non-initial tellings, respectively. Chapter 7 deals
with responses to tellings, while later comments are analyzed in Chapter 8.
The volume concludes with a final discussion and a summary of the findings
(Chapter 9).

The introduction reviews some of the most relevant research on
computer-mediated communication both in general and for FB in particular. The
main hypothesis of the book is that FB comment threads are organized in an
identifiable structure, thus showing sequence organization. After describing
the rationale for applying CA methods to answer the research questions, key
concepts of CA that would be used later in the book are introduced, namely the
turn-taking system, sequence organization, and tellings. 

Chapter 2 starts with a description of the FB interface and follows with a
brief description of the research design. Additionally, the methods for data
collection, obtaining informed consent, selection of the captures and
transcribing conventions are discussed. The corpus includes a collection of
screen captures of the author’s FB feed, from which 1264 comments were
selected from 213 unique comment threads. Comments were written in Italian and
regional varieties of Italian, with few in other languages.

The third chapter explores the most important features of comment threads,
which are composed of several related comments. The differences between
comment threads and spoken conversations are also described in this section of
the book. Contrary to face-to-face communication, FB conversation recipients
and potential participants are often unknown, communication is generally
quasi-synchronous or asynchronous, and multimodal elements, such as hyperlinks
or images, may be used. Similar to spoken conversation, poster changes are
common and pragmatically complete units are preferred. The chapter also
introduces one of the main arguments of the book: the presence of a structure
in comment threads.

Chapter 4 deals with tellings, the basic sequence of FB comment threads.
First-post tellings are of special interest, as almost all the first-posts of
the corpus contained a telling. The author classifies the different formats of
tellings (textual, photo, hyperlink tellings and combinations of text with
photos or hyperlinks) and the focus (autobiographical or related to a
third-person). In the final section of the chapter, Farina analyzes how some
of the specific affordances of the social network may encourage the use of
tellings by FB users, such as the dialogue box “What’s on your mind?” (defined
as a “telling elicitor”) and the type of content spreadable by means of the
“share” button. 

The next chapter (5) further explores first-post tellings. Contrary to spoken
conversation, one of the main interactional problems of FB posters is to
secure respondents for the tellings. Different techniques used by FB users to
deal with this problem are described in the chapter, such as naming the
intended recipients of the post, providing background information to guarantee
a proper interpretation of the post (and the expected response), and using
humor. 

In Chapter 6 non-initial tellings, which occur in comments that are not the
first of a comment thread, are considered. Similar to second stories in spoken
conversation, FB users employ these tellings to show understanding of the
first-post telling and to signal affiliation. In the corpus these non-initial
tellings stimulate very few responses from other FB friends; according to the
author, this is likely because of the specific affordances of FB interface,
which by default displays (hence making more available) only the most recent
comments of the thread.

The first comment made by each user in a comment thread opened by a telling is
the focus of “Responses to Tellings” (Chapter 7). These responses are very
similar to spoken interactions. FB users respond expressing evaluations,
laughter, further tellings, and humorous unlikely statements. According to
Farina, this is not surprising, as the first-post telling usually orients the
kind of response the poster expects in return. 

Chapter 8 analyzes later comments made by the poster of the first comment in
response. These later comments are often responses to the most recent
contribution and are often oriented to the action performed in the previous
comment. The author also finds instances of dyadic exchanges in his corpus,
especially when posters are simultaneously online. 

The final chapter presents the conclusions of the work, summarizes the
findings, and highlights evidence of the existence of sequence organization in
FB comment threads. This section of the book includes suggestions for future
research, such as extending the analysis to other languages and demographics,
including “reactions” in the analysis and exploring whether the findings are
applicable to other forms of computer-mediated communication. 

EVALUATION

“Facebook and Conversation Analysis” is a welcome addition to research on CMC,
as it provides an original and much-needed systematic analysis of the
structure of FB comment threads. 

The very choice of CA is of interest, as these methods have seldom been used
in the analysis of FB data (as recognized in the introduction of the book).
>From a broader perspective, this volume joins a scholarly discussion on the
use of CA methods to study online corpora. CA has been used since the late
1990s to analyze online interactions. Overwhelmingly, previous CA research on
online corpora has dealt with the comparison between face-to-face and online
interactions and, to a lesser extent, the way interactional coherence is
maintained despite what has been called “disrupted turn adjacency” (Herring
1999). Repairs in chats and other forms of CMC are another topic of digital CA
research (see Paulus, Warren & Lester 2016 for a review of research in this
field). To the extent of my knowledge, structural features of FB have not been
previously analyzed in such a detailed way, thus confirming the novelty of
this research. 
Drawing on a corpus of FB comment threads written in Italian, Farina found
compelling evidence of the existence of sequence organization, such as turns
at talk in spoken conversation. 

Readers will not only appreciate the analysis, but also the clarity and
accessibility of the whole book, since the structure of each chapter is clear,
the main findings are repeated several times, excerpts from the corpus are
carefully translated and thoroughly analyzed, and the writing style is clear.
Though the scope of the book is confined to Italian, its general conclusions
can be safely extended to other Western languages.

In the analysis of the structure of FB comment threads, Farina properly
considers how the technological affordances of the platform influence the
interactions. However, I think that some FB features are not considered in the
book. As he works with screen captures, the possible interactional functions
of the “like” button (“reactions” did not exist at the time of data
collection) are not considered, but it is possible from the data to consider
if friends that “like” a post are also more likely to comment on it, or
general structural characteristics of posts that receive more “likes”. Another
missing FB feature, which may have interactional functions, are notifications.
FB users may receive notifications when others comment on a thread they have
already commented on or that they are following. It is worth investigating
whether receiving a notification increases the likelihood of a response to a
comment. 

In conclusion, this book is a valuable addition to the literature on CMC in
general and digital CA in particular. Aside from the suggestions for future
research indicated by the author in the final chapter of the book, other
features worth investigating in the future are multimodal responses. Apart
from “reactions”, it may be interesting to pursue research on the use of
animated GIFs, photos and hyperlinks in response to comment threads (not only
in first-post tellings, as considered in this book). In addition, although
almost all of first-posts contain tellings, the structure of threads opened by
a post that does not contain a telling may be analyzed. Future research could
also consider whether the specific affordances of the mobile application have
consequences on the structure of FB conversations (Farina’s analysis focuses
only on the web-based version of the social network) and expand the analysis
to other social media platforms.

REFERENCES

Giles, David, Wyke Stommel, Trena Paulus, Jessica Lester & Darren Reed. 2015.
Microanalysis of online data: The methodological development of “digital CA”.
Discourse, Context and Media 7(2015). 45-51. 

Herring, Susan C. 1999. Interactional coherence in CMC. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 4(4).

Meredith, Joanne. 2017. Analysing technological affordances of online
interactions using conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 115(2017).
42-55. 

Paulus, Trena, Amber Warren & Jessica Lester. 2016. Applying conversation
analysis methods to online talk: A literature review. Discourse, Context and
Media 12(2016). 1-10.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Agnese Sampietro owns a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Valencia
(Spain) and currently is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University Jaume
I (Spain). She has expertise in computer-mediated communication and
multimodality with a focus on Spanish. Her work draws on different academic
traditions around language and communication, as discourse analysis,
sociolinguistics, pragmatics and cultural studies to analyze the way language,
writing, reading and communication are changing due to the spread of digital
devices.





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