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Sticker use is an increasingly popular part of daily messaging activity. However, little is known regarding the types, functions, and outcomes of sticker use in authentic online communications. To investigate these phenomena, we analysed sticker use in five small mobile-messaging-facilitated discussion groups initiated by students for course projects in an Asian university. The students used four types of stickers, among which ‘animated picture without text’ was the most frequent. Sticker functions fell into two main categories: as a tone indicator with scope over a textual message, and as a stand-alone illocutionary act. Based on interviews with seven participants, we found disparities between the sender’s intention and the receiver’s interpretation for 34.7% of the stickers, but these disparities did not adversely affect the communication. Implications of the findings are discussed.

This study posits that graphicon use follows an evolutionary trajectory characterized by stages. Drawing on evidence that the uses and functions of emoticons have changed over time and that the introduction of emoji affected the popularity and usage of emoticons, we examine the uses of the newer types, emoji and stickers, and consider the relationship of stickers to emoji. Adapting the apparent-time method from the sociolinguistic study of language change, we compare sticker and emoji use by English-speaking Facebook Messenger users, exploring how they are used and under what conditions using semi-structured interviews and a large-scale survey. Stickers are argued to be more pragmatically marked for emotional intensity, positivity, and intimacy, characteristic of a more recent stage of evolution, while emoji use exhibits signs of conventionalization and pragmatic unmarking. The identification of patterns that characterize evolutionary stages has implications for future graphicon use.

An online survey, the Understanding Emoji Survey , was conducted to assess how English-speaking social media users interpret the pragmatic functions of emoji in examples adapted from public Facebook comments, based on a modified version of [15]’s taxonomy of functions. Of the responses received (N = 519; 351 females, 120 males, 48 “other”; 354 under 30, 165 over 30, age range 18--70+), tone modification was the preferred interpretation overall, followed by virtual action , although interpretations varied significantly by emoji type. Female and male interpretations were generally similar, while “other” gender respondents differed significantly in dispreferring tone and preferring multiple functions . Respondents over 30 often did not understand the functions or interpreted the emoji literally, while younger users interpreted them in more conventionalized ways. Older males were most likely, and younger females were least likely, to not understand emoji functions and to find emoji confusing or annoying, consistent with previously reported gender and age differences in attitudes toward, and frequency of, emoji use.

This case study examined patterns in online communication using computer-mediated discourse analysis to better understand how teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence are manifest...

Participants in textual CMC must identify to whom or what a message responds in order to establish conversational coherence. Media sharing sites provide rich prompts that make available multiple, diverse, potential addressees. We conducted an exploratory content analysis of addressee types and how they relate to the content of messages in three YouTube comment threads related to the COVID-19 pandemic, applying addressee and topic coding schemes inspired by [6]'s YouTube participation framework. Some addressee types and content types were mentioned significantly more frequently than others, although there was variation across threads. Also, certain kinds of topics were addressed more with certain addressees, and different topics were addressed in replies than in comments. Thus, the interaction between addressee and message content should be considered in analyses of conversational coherence on YouTube and other rich-prompt CMC platforms. © 2021 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Each new type of graphical icon (graphicon) in CMC has been more complex and multimodal than its predecessor. For this reason, and because of their novelty, Konrad, Herring, and Choi (2020) claim that new graphicon types are initially restricted to use in intimate relationships. We explore this proposition qualitatively by interviewing student users of Animoji – dynamic, large-scale emoji on the Apple iPhone – about who they send Animoji messages to and why. The results of a think-aloud card sort task in which participants (N = 33) matched seven Animoji with seven relationship categories at different social distances and sent a message to each one were triangulated with responses to open-ended questions before and after the task. Participants sent Animoji to close friends, significant others, and siblings, and to a lesser extent, parents and other family members. They rejected the idea of sending Animoji to more distant relationships such as a teaching assistant, a mentor, and new friends. Different Animoji were considered more or less suitable for each relationship, as well as for recipients of different genders. The reasons given by the interviewees for sending Animoji to each relationship category centered around themes of politeness, (in)formality, familiarity, and self-presentation.

We compared psychological distance in a mock job interview that was conducted either in-person or via mobile telepresence. In the mobile telepresence setting, the interviewers communicated through a telepresence robot. In one of the first explorations of how mobile telepresence affected psychological distance, we analyzed use of pronouns that suggested distance or closeness, and we also analyzed interviewer behavior (backchanneling) across the conditions. In addition, we analyzed stories told as part of the interview. We looked at elements of the stories as well as how interviewees interacted with physical objects on a table in front of them. We found that mobile telepresence disrupts conversational processes and content and amplifies psychological distance. There were fewer backchannels in the mobile telepresence setting and changed story elements. Interviewees also made use of objects differently in the mobile telepresence setting. Pronoun use went against our hypotheses, but can be interpreted as a response to psychological distance. Taken together, the evidence suggests that in-person interviews are more grounded and interactive than interviews via mobile telepresence robots.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide ebook designers and researchers with design insights by promoting historical knowledge about books and reading as sources of ideas to implement in current and future ebooks. Design/methodology/approach The authors review historical features of books and practices of reading that have been implemented, weakened, or lost over time, referring to historical texts and resources, and relate them to ebook viewers (software) and readers (hardware) that are currently on the market. In particular, the review focuses on the physical form of the book and the practices of reading, annotation, and bookshelving. Findings While some older forms and reading practices have been implemented in ebook devices, others have been forgotten over time, due in part to physical constraints that are no longer relevant. The authors suggest that features that constrained print books and print reading in the past might actually improve the design of ebooks and e-reading in the present. Research limitations/implications This review is necessarily based on a limited set of existing historical sources. Practical implications Translating insights into novel tangible designs is always a challenging task. Ebook designers can gain insights from this paper that can be applied in a variety of design contexts. Originality/value No previous work on ebook design has foregrounded historical aspects of books and reading as viable sources of ideas to implement in ebooks.

The popular press is currently rife with speculation that emoji are becoming a global, digitally-mediated language. Sequences of emoji that function like verbal utterances potentially lend strong support to this claim. We employ computer-mediated discourse analysis to analyze the pragmatic meanings conveyed through emoji sequences and their rhetorical relations with accompanying text, focusing on posts by social media influencers and their followers on a popular Chinese social media platform. The findings show that the emoji sequences can function pragmatically like verbal utterances and form relations with textual propositions, although their usage differs from textual utterances in several respects. We also observed user innovations that make the sequences more language like, although there is not as yet a fixed grammar of emoji sequences. We characterize this emoji use as an emergent graphical language, with the caveats that it is not yet a fully-formed language and that the Chinese emoji language that is emerging is different from the English variety, and therefore emoji are not a universal language. In order to promote the further development of emoji language(s), we advance recommendations for emoji design grounded in linguistic principles.

Susan Herring, the originator of the computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) paradigm, describes efforts to extend CMDA over time in order to address changes in computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as nontextual communication and the trend toward convergence of multiple modes of CMC in a single platform. Following a review of three broad stages of technological evolution that shaped CMC from 1985 to 2017 and the themes favored by CMDA researchers at each stage, Herring proposes a reconceptualization of CMC itself as inherently multimodal. This reconceptualization includes communication mediated by graphical phenomena such as emoji and avatars in virtual worlds, as well as by certain kinds of robots. She argues that the principles at the core of the CMDA paradigm apply equally to interaction in these nontextual modes.

In this document we explain the need and plans for a SIG Meeting at CHI on telepresence robots. We describe the organization of this SIG, our expected attendees, procedure and schedule of topics to be discussed, as well as our recruitment plan. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss key issues surrounding the uses and usefulness of telepresence robots, including challenges and best practices.

This study investigates to what extent greetings on a social network site popular with South Asians are associated with the degree of interpersonal closeness of the users, educated middle class Bengalis in the United States. Computer-mediated discourse analysis, face-to-face interviews, and participant observation were employed to analyze the textual comments exchanged in 79 Bengali dyads. The analyses reveal a relationship between degree of social distance and frequencies of Bangla greetings when type of greeting (regular vs. ritualistic) and manner of expression (unmarked vs. intensified) are taken into account. However, some aspects of the interplay between interpersonal closeness and greetings can only be understood if cultural nuances and medium factors are taken into consideration.

This study explores how male and female users of Voicethread.com, an interactive multimodal web 2.0 platform that allows asynchronous commenting via text, audio, and video, communicate and perform identity through self-expression in different semiotic modes. A quantitative computer-mediated discourse analysis of three public English-language Voicethreads found that in video and audio comments, both genders express more positive attitudes; they are also more self-conscious and ego-focused. The text comments express more neutral and negative attitudes, especially when written by males, but they are also more socially interactive. With few exceptions, female communication patterns resemble those for audio and video, while male communication patterns resemble those for text. We propose explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for identity performances in interactive multimodal environments. Voicethread est une plate-forme interactive multimodale web 2.0 (IMP) qui permet des commentaires asynchrones sous forme de texte, d'audio et de vidéo. De par leur nature même les IMP telles que Voicethread soulèvent des questions sur le pourquoi et le comment les utilisateurs choisissent de s'exprimer sur un mode donné ainsi que sur la manière dont les modes de communication numériques fonctionnent comme véhicules de la mise en œuvre d'une identité. De précédentes études du discours textuel médié par ordinateur ont identifié des styles masculins et féminins d'auto-expression en ligne (par exemple, Herring, 1994, 1995). La présente étude analyse comment les participants à trois sessions Voicethread publiques communiquent et mettent en œuvre des identités genrées à travers l'auto-expression dans différents modes sémiotiques. Pour ce faire, nous recourons à une approche du discours médié par ordinateur (CMDA) qui adapte des méthodes linguistiques à l'analyse de la communication en ligne et qui implique de "coder et compter" des traits linguistiques (Herring, 2004). Spécifiquement, pour voir si des modes plus riches sont associés à une plus grande sociabilité comme l'ont affirmé les théories de la présence sociale et de la richesse des médias (par exemple, Daft & Lengel, 1984 ; Short, Williams & Christie, 1976), nous avons identifié et compté tous les mots des commentaires Voicethread qui traduisent une prise de conscience sociale et une orientation de ceux qui commentent vers ceux à qui ils s'adressent, ou ce que Hyland (2015) appelle le "métadiscours." Pour évaluer l'effet du mode de commentaire, nous avons codé et compté les expressions associées à l'affect, au jugement et à l'appréciation en nous appuyant sur les catégories de Martin et White (2005), de même qu'en codant la tonalité des expressions, les considérant comme positives, négatives ou neutres. La fréquence des participations a également été notée. Ces analyses ont révélé des différences entre les utilisateurs masculins et féminins de Voicethread, de même que des différences entre modes. Globalement les hommes ont proposé plus de contributions que les femmes, ce qui correspond aux résultats obtenus précédemment pour la communication médiée par ordinateur uniquement textuelle. De plus, les commentaires vidéo, quoique peu nombreux, ont été produits massivement par des hommes, ce qui correspond aux recherches précédentes, qui ont montré que les hommes sont plus susceptibles que les femmes d'adopter rapidement une nouvelle technologie (par exemple, Venkatesh & Morris, 2000). Pour ce qui est des modes, les participants, quel que soit leur genre, ont tous exprimé des attitudes plus positives dans les commentaires audio et vidéo que dans les commentaires textuels. Ils se sont également montrés plus gênés et centrés sur leur ego spécialement avec la vidéo, comme le montre la citation du titre de cet article. Par contraste, les commentaires textuels exprimaient des attitudes plus neutres et négatives mais ils étaient également – de manière inattendue – plus interactifs socialement que les commentaires vidéo ou audio. Ces résultats correspondent en partie aux affirmations s'appuyant sur les théories de la présence sociale et de la richesse des médias bien qu'ils suggèrent un paysage plus complexe. De manière intéressante, à de rares exceptions, les schémas de communication des femmes ressemblent à ceux de l'audio et de la vidéo alors que ceux des hommes ressemblent aux schémas textuels. Nous proposons des explications à ces associations qui ont recours aux notions de sociabilité (pour les femmes et les médias riches) et de prise de distance (pour les hommes et les médias peu riches). L'article se conclut par une discussion des implications des différences entre modes pour la mise en œuvre de son identité sur les IMP et suggère des pistes pour de futures recherches multimodales.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY On receiving the 2013 ASIS&T Research Award, Susan Herring reflected on her early interest in computer-mediated communication (CMC) in 1991, when the field was novel, limited and barely recognized. The intersection of linguistics and digital technology were intriguing and offered potential for rich discovery. Data sources have grown from the foundational ARPAnet to the World Wide Web and expanded from the exchange of basic textual messages to incorporate all modes of digitally mediated communication across unlimited platforms. The result is a vast amount of computer-mediated data, but there is still the pressing need for structured methods and theoretical frameworks for effective analysis. Herring applies discourse analysis and other linguistic approaches to CMC analysis, increasingly in combination with a big data perspective to identify communication patterns in large datasets. She is eager to see further research on new analytical methods, cultural influences and the integration of telepresence robots in CMC.

This study analyzes how teens represent themselves through their profile photographs on a popular nonymous chat site. Using visual content analysis methods, we analyzed 400 profile photographs, controlling for the self-reported gender and the apparent race of the photographic subject. The analysis finds significant differences in gaze, posture, dress, and distance from the camera according to gender and race, although racial differences are stronger for boys than for girls. To a surprising extent, the findings mirror previous findings of gender and race differences in face-to-face interaction, suggesting that the teens construe their profile images as invitations to interact with others online. At the same time, their photo choices reproduce culturally dominant ideologies of gender and race as reinforced by mass media images.

Telepresence robotics is a sophisticated form of robotic remote control in which a human operator has a sense of being on location -- that is, of being telepresent. I propose a demonstration of two telepresence robots, one floor model (VGo) and one tabletop model (KUBI). In this proposal, I describe the technology and briefly summarize the research that led to the purchase of the robots. The research focused on the telepresence needs of a mobility-impaired academic and included a user study as well as a review of the affordances of commercially-available telepresence robotic devices. The implications extend beyond uses of telepresence robots in cases of mobility impairment to academic contexts in general.

This study evaluates empirically the proposition implicit in much recent gender and CMC research that expressions of gender distinctness among teens in online environments are becoming less frequent and less traditional. Gender preferences were analyzed in linguistic features and communication styles in synchronous text messages, along with self-presentation in user profile pictures, drawing on data from popular English-language teen chat sites collected in 2010. Significant differences were found in speech acts, message tone, and in physical stance, dress, and social distance in profile pictures that generally conform to traditional gender stereotypes. These findings are interpreted in light of previous gender and teen CMC research, adolescent development and socialization patterns, mass media representations, and trends towards media convergence in chat platforms.

Wikipedia advocates a strict “neutral point of view” (NPOV) policy. However, although originally a U.S-based, English-language phenomenon, the online, user-created encyclopedia now has versions in many languages. This study examines the extent to which content and perspectives vary across cultures by comparing articles about famous persons in the Polish and English editions of Wikipedia. The results of quantitative and qualitative content analyses reveal systematic differences related to the different cultures, histories, and values of Poland and the United States; at the same time, a U.S./English-language advantage is evident throughout. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for the quality and objectivity of Wikipedia as a global repository of knowledge are discussed, and recommendations are advanced for Wikipedia end users and content developers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Project-based learning engages students in problem solving through artefact design. However, previous studies of online project-based learning have focused primarily on the dynamics of online collaboration; students' knowledge construction throughout this process has not been examined thoroughly. This case study analyzed the relationship between students' levels of knowledge construction during asynchronous online discussions with respect to engagement in project-based learning. Graduate students' online postings in a course that comprised both project-based and non-project learning activities were coded and counted for knowledge construction, teaching, and social interaction moves using computer-mediated discourse analysis. Chi-square analyses found that the instructor's teaching discourse remained fairly consistent during project-based and non-project learning. Despite this, students' online discussions during project-based learning were characterized by more advanced levels of knowledge construction, where ideas were rationalized and integrated into plausible solutions. In contrast, students' online postings outside project-based learning rarely moved beyond the lower levels of information sharing and idea exploration. Based on these results, guidelines for designing and facilitating online project-based learning are presented and discussed.

Research is scarce on how direct and indirect support seeking strategies affect support exchange in online health communities. Moreover, prior research has relied mostly on content analysis of forum posts at the post level. In order to generate a more fine-grained analysis of support exchange, we conducted content analysis at the utterance level, taking directness of support seeking, quality of provision, forum type, and seeker gender into account. Our analysis of four popular online support forums for people living with human immunodeficiency virus found that type of support sought and provided, support seeking strategy, and quality of emotional support provision differed in care provider/formal forums versus social/informal forums. Interestingly, indirect support seeking tended to elicit more supportive emotional responses than direct support seeking strategies in all forums, we account for this in terms of type of support sought. Practical implications for online support communities are discussed.

The term 'emoticons'—short for 'emotion icons'—refers to graphic signs, such as the smiley face, that often accompany computer-mediated textual communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one. In this article, it is argued that this conception of emoticons fails to account for some of their important uses. We present a brief outline of speech act theory and use it to provide a complementary account of emoticons, according to which they also function as indicators of illocutionary force. More broadly, we identify and illustrate three ways in which emoticons function: 1) as emotion indicators, mapped directly onto facial expression; 2) as indicators of non-emotional meanings, mapped conventionally onto facial expressions, and 3) as illocutionary force indicators that do not map conventionally onto a facial expression. In concluding, we draw parallels between emoticons and utterance-final punctuation marks, and show how our discussion of emoticons bears upon the broader question of the bounds between linguistic and non-linguistic communication.

This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography—specifically, abbreviations and insertions—in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program. All broadcast SMS were collected for a period of 2 days from the Web archive for the iTV program, and the frequency and distribution of abbreviations and insertions, as well as overall message lengths, were analyzed according to sender gender. The results reveal that females posted more and longer SMS and followed more, and more varied, nonstandard typographic practices, contrary to previous gender-related findings in the sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication literatures. A theoretically grounded explanation for these findings is developed in terms of the localized norms of a heterosexual market—and an implicit dating market—in Italian iTV SMS.

This study investigates the effects of gender consciousness among students enrolled in IT programs at five U.S. universities. Based on 136 in-depth face-to-face interviews, we assess the overall level of gender consciousness among the IT students, proposing a new distinction between awareness of gender inequity and concern about such inequity, and identify characteristics of students with varying levels of gender consciousness. We then consider the relationship between level of gender consciousness and two self-efficacy measures—self-confidence and ambition—as regards the students' education and future IT careers. Our findings suggest that gender consciousness is related to lived experience, and has positive implications, via the mediating variable of self-efficacy, for women IT students' educational and professional success.

This panel will provide a global perspective on Wikipedia research. The literature on Wikipedia is mostly anecdotal, and most of the research has focused attention primarily on the English Wikipedia examining the accuracy of entries compared to established online encyclopedias (Emigh & Herring, 2005; Giles, 2005; Rosenzweig, 2006) and analyzing the evolution of articles over time (Viegas, Wattenberg, & Dave, 2004; Viegas, Wattenberg, Kriss, & van Ham, 2007). Others have examined the quality of contribution (Stvilia et al., 2005). However, only a few studies have conducted comparative analyses across languages or analyzed Wikipedia in languages other than English (e.g., Pfeil, Zaphiris, & Ang, 2006). There is a need for international, cross-cultural understanding of Wikipedia. In an effort to address this gap, this panel will present a range of international and cross-cultural research of Wikipedia. The presenters will contribute different perspectives of Wikipedia as an international sociocultural institution and will describe similarities and differences across various national/language versions of Wikipedia. Shachaf and Hara will present variation of norms and behaviors on talk pages in various languages of Wikipedia. Herring and Callahan will share results from a cross-language comparison of biographical entries that exhibit variations in content of entries in the English and Polish versions of Wikipedia and will explain how they are influenced by the culture and history of the US and Poland. Stvilia will discuss some of the commonalities and variability of quality models used by different Wikipedias, and the problems of cross-language quality measurement aggregation and reasoning. Matei will describe the social structuration and distribution of roles and efforts in wiki teaching environments. Solomon's comments, as a discussant, will focus on how these comparative insights provide evidence of the ways in which an evolving institution, such as Wikipedia, may be a force for supporting cultural identity (or not).

We introduce an efficient coding system for dynamic topic analysis (DTA), a computer-mediated discourse analysis technique that codes and visualizes topical development over time in online discussions. Our system provides three main functionalities: intuitive coding with a touch screen interface, automated inter-rater agreement computation, and visualization of the coding results. Using the system, we conducted a preliminary DTA of 28,131 user comments from the popular music distribution sites SoundCloud and Last.fm. The analysis shows that most SoundCloud and Last.FM comments are narrowly on-topic and prompt-focused, as compared to discussions in other social media that exhibit more topical elaboration.

This study describes an example of design-based research in which we make theoretical improvements in our understanding, in part based on empirical work, and use these to revise our curriculum and, simultaneously, our evolving theory of the relations betweencontextsanddisciplinaryformalisms.Priortothisstudy,wecompletedafirstcycle of design revisions to a game-based ecological sciences curriculum to make more apparent specific domain concepts associated with targeted learning standards. Of particular interest was using gaming principles to embed standards-based science concepts in the curricular experiencewithoutunderminingthesituativeembodimentcentraltoourdesignphilosophy. InStudyOnereportedhere,thesamefirst-cycleelementaryteacherusedtherefinedsecond- cycle curriculum, again with high-ability fourth graders. We then analyzed qualitative and quantitative data on student participation and performance to further refine our theory and revise the curriculum. In Study Two, another teacher implemented a further refined second- cycle curriculum with lower achieving fourth graders, including several students labeled as having special needs. We use the design trajectory and results to illustrate and warrant the creation of a situationally embodied curriculum that supports the learning of specific disciplinary formalisms. C

This study investigates the relationship between computer self-efficacy, mentoring, and the gender of mentors and students. The decline of women in IT-related programs of U.S. universities has led scholars to suggest that making more female faculty mentors available could raise female students' computer self-efficacy. This could address women's computational reticence and encourage more women to enter and remain in the programs. A survey of students from IT-related programs in five U.S. universities shows that extent of mentoring received, gender of students, and time students spent on computers as teenagers were significant predictors of computer self-efficacy. Extent of mentoring, gender of students, and gender of mentors have significant main effects on computer self-efficacy. Students with male mentors reported significantly higher computer self-efficacy while students with female mentors reported lower computer self-efficacy. Female students with no mentors reported the lowest level of computer self-efficacy.

This case study evaluates the potential of synchronous chat for deep learning in the context of a distance education program between two universities in different cultural contexts, with a focus on interaction and facilitation. Three rubrics—functional moves, social construction of knowledge, and teaching presence—were applied in a longitudinal content analysis of chat sessions between four adult learners in Azerbaijan and their two facilitators in the U.S. The findings reveal that although the quality of the interaction was limited by the nature of the task, language difficulties, and differing cultural expectations about instruction, conceptual negotiative activity increased over time. In conjunction with previous research on constructivist learning, these results support the view that synchronous chat can facilitate deep learning, but also suggest that the cost may outweigh the benefits, especially when language and cultural barriers must be overcome.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) relies heavily on propaganda in the form of videos distributed over social media to recruit supporters and new members to its cause, including from the U.S. The U.S. government has countered with anti-ISIS propaganda videos; however, sources claim that the U.S. is losing the propaganda war. We evaluate that claim through a comparative multimodal content analysis of the ISIS video Flames of War and the videos posted in response on the U.S. Department of State’s (USDS) Think Again Turn Away YouTube channel. Our findings shed light on some of the reasons why the USDS anti-propaganda videos are less rhetorically effective than the ISIS videos, including a one-dimensional narrative, a stance that could appear inauthentic, and a lack of sensitivity to Islamic culture. In concluding, we advance recommendations that the USDS could follow to strengthen its online propaganda defense against ISIS, and extend the implications of our findings to other social media fronts where the ISIS vs. USDS propaganda war is being waged.

PurposeAims to describe systematically the characteristics of weblogs (blogs) – frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence and which are the latest genre of internet communication to attain widespread popularity.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of 203 randomly selected blogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of blogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects.FindingsNotably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self‐expression.Originality/valueBased on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, considers the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situates it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the internet today, and suggests possible developments of the use of blogs over time in response to changes in user behavior, technology, and the broader ecology of internet genres.

L'article constitue un panorama de la recherche empirique sur la communication mediatisee par ordinateur (CMO) et l'internet. Il s'organise en trois grandes sections : la premiere section contient une classification des types de CMO en termes de modes et retrace l'histoire et les caracteristiques de neuf modes de CMO sur l'internet : courrier electronique, listes de discussion, Usenet, protocole de conversation par ecran divise, chat, MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), World Wide Web, techniques audio et video, environnements graphiques de realite virtuelle. La deuxieme section revoit les premieres declarations concernant la CMO d'avant l'internet, notamment au niveau de ses limitations technologiques, a la lumiere de la recherche sur la CMO par l'internet. La troisieme section identifie les nouveaux phenomenes de communication permis par l'internet et examine la recherche sur les opportunites et les defis qu'ils constituent : liberte d'expression, communaute, impacts personnels, confiance et desillusion, vie privee, ethique, conversations a tres grande echelle, democratie electronique, mondialisation, commercialisation. L'A. conclut sur les directions futures de la recherche en CMO.

Computer-mediated discourse is the communication produced when human beings interact with one another by transmitting messages via networked computers. The study of computer-mediated discourse (henceforth CMD) is a specialization within the broader interdisciplinary study of computer-mediated communication (CMC), distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer networked environments, and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to address that focus. Most CMC currently in use is text-based, that is, messages are typed on a computer keyboard and read as text on a computer screen, typically by a person or persons at a different location from the message sender. Text-based CMC takes a variety of forms (e.g., e-mail, discussion groups, real-time chat, virtual reality role-playing games) whose linguistic properties vary depending on the kind of messaging system used and the social and cultural context embedding particular instances of use. However, all such forms have in common that the activity that takes place through them is constituted primarily -in many cases, exclusively -by visually-presented language. These characteristics of the medium have important consequences for understanding the nature of computer-mediated language. They also provide a unique environment, free from competing influences from other channels of communication and from physical context, in which to study verbal interaction and the relationship between discourse and social practice.

Although a substantial body of research exists on gender differences in computer-mediated communication, relatively little empirical attention has been directed toward how people perform a different gender online, or to what behavioral cues other participants attend in assessing others’ real-life gender. This study analyzes deceptive gender performances and assessments of their authenticity in The Turing Game, a publicly available synchronous text chat environment that supports spontaneous identity games. Content analysis of game logs shows that contestants produce stereotypical content when attempting to pass as the opposite gender, as well as giving off stylistic cues to their real-life gender. However, contrary to previous evidence that people judge online gender authenticity on the basis of linguistic styles, the judges in The Turing Game base their assessments mostly on stereotyped content, leading to a high rate of error. These findings are interpreted in terms of signal costs and conscious accessibility of cues.

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Online dating systems are the most common way people meet their marriage partners online. Nevertheless, online daters struggle to evaluate personality traits of potential partners using profile pages and private messaging in these systems. Meanwhile, Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) have emerged as a popular way young people find romantic partners for relationships in the physical world. We conducted two interview studies -- one concerning evaluation behavior in online dating systems (n=41) and the other concerning collaborative activities in MOGs (n=35). Insights from these studies reveal the weaknesses in evaluation tools native to online dating and suggest that collaborative activities could potentially address evaluation challenges in online dating. The paper concludes with a discussion of a series of design concepts for online dating in order to improve users' abilities to evaluate their potential romantic partners for in-person meetings.

Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience, and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with regard to representations of gender and sexuality, in an online game (Audition) where a ludological simulation of marriage is centrally embedded in gameplay. Findings reveal that marriage-as-ludic-rule-system and marriage-as-significant-sociocultural-institution provide a double set of gameplay/social/psychosexual resources that players collaboratively learn and perform, and that this negotiation is a source of pleasure, frustration, and meaning in the game. These findings can contribute to understanding the specificity and heterogeneity of players' gender representation in virtual worlds and inform the design of mixed reality games that simulate important life events for learning.

This article is concerned with how teenage boys and girls present themselves through online social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and chat forums. Based on research conducted mostly in the United States, it describes and considers the implications of social media use, profile construction, visual and textual self-presentation, profile visibility, truthfulness, and other facets of teens' self-presentation in relation to their gender.

A common phenomenon in online discussion groups is the individual who baits and provokes other group members, often with the result of drawing them into fruitless argument and diverting attention from the stated purposes of the group. This study documents a case in which the members of an online community--a feminist web-based discussion forum--are targeted by a "troll" attempting to disrupt their discussion space. We analyze the strategies that make the troller successful and the targeted group largely ineffectual in responding to his attack, as a means to understand how such behavior might be minimized and managed in general. The analysis further suggests that feminist and other nonmainstream online forums are especially vulnerable, in that they must balance inclusive ideals against the need for protection and safety, a tension that can be exploited by disruptive elements to generate intragroup conflict.

We manually analyzed a corpus of Tumblr posts for sentiment, looking at images, text, and their combination. A dataset was constructed of posts with both text and images, as well as a dataset of posts containing only text, along with a codebook for classifying and counting the content in each. This paper reports on the construction of the overall corpus and the codebook, and presents the results of a preliminary analysis that focuses on emotion. Posts containing images expressed more emotion, more intense emotion, and were more positive in valence than posts containing only text. The study contributes a micro-level analysis of multimodal communication in a social media platform, as well as a gold standard corpus that can be used to train learning algorithms to identify sentiment in multimodal Tumblr data.