Computer-mediated

discourse
 Terminology
• “computer-mediated communication”
• Problems?

• Alternative terms:
– “digital media”/ “digital discourse”?
– “new media”?
– “keyboard-to-screen communication”
 The Internet (World Wide Web)
• conceived by physicist Tim Berners-Lee at the
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in
1990
• implemented by 1991
 Development of World Wide Web
• the early websites (mid-1990s) featured

– single-authored, fairly static documents;

– personal homepages,
– lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs)
– e-commerce sites

• late 1990s: shift toward more dynamic, interactive websites

– online news sites
– blogs
 Web 2.0
• popular web-based platforms characterized by
– social interaction
– user-generated content

• initially a business strategy:

– viral marketing rather than advertising
– focus on services over products.
 Web 2.0 today
a) „changing trends in, and new uses of, web
technology and web design, especially involving
participatory information sharing; user-generated
content, an ethic of collaboration and use of the
web as a social platform”

b) types of sites that manifest these uses, e.g.

– blogs
– wikis
– social network sites
– media-sharing sites.
Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0
To create a feed for (a
website), allowing user
s to include content fro
m the website in other
websites or to
view the content.
• Which activities do you associate with the
following websites/ applications?
• Instagram/ Flickr/ Picassa
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Wikipedia
• Skype
• Snapchat
Convergent media computer-mediated
communication (CMCMC)
• typical of Web 2.0 sites:

• text comments on photosharing sites

• text (and video) responses to YouTube videos
• text (and voice) chat during multiplayer
online games
• text messages from mobile phones posted to
interactive TV programs
Issues for Computer Mediated Discourse analysis
• new types of content :
– status updates
– text annotations on video
– tags on social bookmarking sites
– edits on wikis
• new contexts
– social network sites based on geographic location
– new (mass media) audiences (other languages and
cultures
• new usage patterns
– media coactivity
– near-simultaneous multiple activities on a single platform
(Skype?....)
 (Portfolio) Task

• Spot and exemplify (by marking them) instances of

the aforementioned phenomena on sites you find
best instantiate them.
• Discuss both advantages and disadvantages of
these in relation to their :
a) predecessors (the ‘traditional’ media)
b) competitors (similar or comparable contemporary
media)
Phenomena in Discourse 2.0
• Chronology?
 older phenomena might be expected to be familiar,
and new ones to be emergent?

• Herring (2006)
 Familiar
 Reconfigured
 Emergent
 Reproduced content (‘shovelware’):

• previously created with word processing software

offline and simply uploaded to the web, e.g.

• course syllabi

• scholarly articles

• meeting minutes
 Adapted genres
• preserve the basic genre conventions of their
offline precursors—but with adaptations, e.g.
– user commenting

– hyperlinking news sites

– genealogy sites,

– ejournals
 Genre shifts
• (paradoxically) as they age web genres shift along
a continuum from reproduced to adapted to
emergent
• e.g. online news sites
– tended to be reproduced from print newspapers in
the early days
– today: increasingly adapted to the web:
• user comments
• multimedia
• hyperlinks
• other interactivity and navigation features
Slide Title
 Facebook as an emergent genre
• Harvard University dormitory “face books” +web-
based features (commenting) → adaptation
• Subsequent addition of features (embedded
graphics, games, polls, and various modes of CMC)

→ emergent:
 number of features
 the whole is qualitatively different from the sum of its
parts
 no single offline or online precedent
Compare the original Facebook page to the modern layout and spot the
differences . Follow the evolution of features through various iterations presented
on the link below and consider the (dis)advantages and rationales of their
introduction

http://time.com/11740/facebook-10-year-anniversary-interfaces/
 Contemporary practices
• “Fakatsa” style (Israeli preeteen girls)
• Fakatsa =silly, fashion-conscious girl

‘Gal, the hot babe’

Similar to texting practices (ur g8t) and leet(speak):
1 k4n 7¥p3 1337 ‘I can type leet’

• a common generative principle exploited spontaneously in

the two different writing systems

• these girls employ discursive repertoires to style, i.e.

enact their gender identities online
Translate this into English from leetspeak
 ‘New literacies’
• ‘Microblogging’
– writing of short messages on the web designed for self-
reporting about what one is doing, thinking, or feeling at
any time
• Status updates, on
– stand-alone microblogging platforms( e.g.Twitter) or
– social network sites (e.g. Facebook)
• exemplify the generic hybridity of many new media
spaces/formats
– Multimodality
– Intertextuality and convergence
– coexistence of various formerly separate web spaces and
media on one single platform
– http://www.academia.edu/3867823/Micro-
Blogging_and_Status_Updates_on_Facebook_Texts_and_Practices
 Emergent genres
• the use of channels other than text, and semiotic systems
other than verbal language, to carry on conversational
exchanges
• enabled by popular access to drawing and photo
modification software
• strategies:
• positional play
• animation
• text-in-image
• image quotes
Slide Title