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"Analysing Digital Interaction" is a book that explores the study of online communication and interaction. The editors highlight the importance of understanding the details of interaction in order to comprehend the changing nature of contemporary society. The book showcases microanalytic methods from conversation analysis, membership category analysis, and discursive psychology to analyze the digital nature of interaction and how it is impacted by being online. The chapters address key methodological issues, such as research ethics and the complexities of online contexts, and demonstrate the performative nature of textual actions and the management of affordances in mediated interaction. The book provides valuable insights into the rapidly evolving forms of life in the digital age. [Extracted from the article]

This article uses conversation analysis to investigate the communicative practices of unacquainted, matched Tinder users in chat conversations, in the process of developing a potential romantic relationship. Drawing on data from 157 Tinder conversations, the analysis explores the occasioning of talk about personal and intimate matters. The analysis shows that the interactional device through which the revelation of personal and intimate information is prompted is the 'elicited self-disclosure sequence'. In cases in which a direct question fails to prompt a disclosure from the recipient, the 'volunteered self-disclosure sequence' emerges as an alternative to promote the revelation of further intimate information. We conclude by observing that relationships are ongoing routine accomplishments arising in mundane sociorelational contexts. The data are in Spanish and Catalan with English translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the ways in which participants in an online asynchronous postgraduate reading group managed and negotiated their contributions within the discussion. Using the conversation analytic concerns with sequential organisation, adjacency pairs and topicality, this article shows the analytic insights that this perspective can bring to the examination of written asynchronous discourse. The paper shows that in the section of the discussion analysed here, the discourse displayed remarkable similarities to the ways in which face-to-face conversation has been seen to operate in terms of the organisation of conversational turns, the application of specific interactional rights, the lineal development of topics of conversation and the structural use of question-answer turn pairs. The paper concludes by showing how this form of analysis can relate to the formation of reflexive pedagogy in which course design can be created to take account of such findings. It shows how a detailed understanding of how pedagogy is played out in interaction is fundamental for reflecting on the relationship between pedagogic aims and educational practice. (Contains 6 figures.)

This paper reviews research on learner and tutor interaction in asynchronous computer-mediated (ACM) conferences used in distance learning. The authors note claims made for the potential of ACM conferences to promote higher-order critical inquiry and the social construction of knowledge, and argue that there is a general lack of evidence regarding the actual achievement of these aims in such conferences. We present and discuss the relevant research literature currently available on the effects of social presence, the tutor's teaching and moderating strategies, and task type. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research in each of these areas. (Contains 4 tables.)

This article examines the structure of topic movement within face-to-face postgraduate university seminar discussion forums through a conversation analytic approach. The analysis of 12 audio recordings of seminars showed that in spite of clear differences in the management style of sessions by seminar leaders there were important consistencies in their normative structure of participation. Previous research has shown that the turn-taking procedures used as a basic organisational feature of the talk have been seen to result in a regular change of topic within seminars. Although the research here supports these findings, the data showed that topic change was only one aspect of the topic negotiation process. The analysis in this article illustrates that topic negotiation was an ever-present feature of the talk and that, in addition to frequent "successful" changes of topic, there were also innumerable "unsuccessful" topical interjections. One prominent source of such failure was the presence of overlap in the seminar talk. In addition to being of value to educationalists wishing to understand educational processes, this analysis is viewed as having significant relevance for the development of alternative distributed media for hosting interactive seminars as it shows the implications of the interactional "affordances" of learning environments for the achievement of interactive talk. This article suggests, therefore, that research and development in this field would benefit from detailed studies of the affordances of these alternative hosting media.

Abstract

This article explores the use of fiction as a mode of representing data in social research. I show that three of the key drivers for fictionalising research accounts relate to the ambitions of aesthetic engagement, verisimilitude and user engagement. I look at the different ways that authors have attempted to achieve these ambitions and the methodological tensions that arise from them. I show that contemporary evaluative criteria in qualitative inquiry helps us to understand that fictional reporting is an important tool for researchers in creating more affective writing. However, there are divergences in how researchers conceive of and use fictional accounts, which highlight the importance of continued debate about the methodological practices of its use. In order to contribute to these debates I point to three areas that need particular consideration for researchers working in this area: (1) the structures of academic publishing and their embodiment in university audit regimes; (2) the absence of engagement with alternative forms of writing in academic professional development and training; and (3) the substantial ethical dilemmas in the use of fictional accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, we provide the scholarly background that motivates the special issue and briefly discuss its content. We touch on contemporary debates in symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and anthropology that inform the research undertaken by the contributors. We conclude by deriving six interrelated themes—intersection, entwinement, multimodal, contextually embedded, structured, and serendipitous—from an examination of the articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on interactionist frameworks of sensorial communication to analyse product reviews on YouTube. Existing studies of YouTube review work have focused on how vloggers manage conflicting neoliberal identity discourses such as 'authenticity', 'being entertaining' and 'selling'. I argue that this focus has been at the expense of the communicative work involved in constructing products in reviews, and I suggest that identity issues should be conceptually expanded through a much broader focus on communicative action and conventions of practice. In order to achieve a first step in this expansion, my analysis focusses on reviewers' sensorial engagement with objects and explores the communicative processes through which they symbolically transform products into enlivened, sensorially rich phenomena. I argue that these communicative strategies are important for situating neoliberal discourses within 'mundane' actions of description and in broader cultural practices of reviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volleyball players are at high risk of overuse shoulder injuries, with spike biomechanics a perceived risk factor. This study compared spike kinematics between elite male volleyball players with and without a history of shoulder injuries. Height, mass, maximum jump height, passive shoulder rotation range of motion (ROM), and active trunk ROM were collected on elite players with (13) and without (11) shoulder injury history and were compared using independent samples t tests (P < .05). The average of spike kinematics at impact and range 0.1 s before and after impact during down-the-line and cross-court spike types were compared using linear mixed models in SPSS (P < .01). No differences were detected between the injured and uninjured groups. Thoracic rotation and shoulder abduction at impact and range of shoulder rotation velocity differed between spike types. The ability to tolerate the differing demands of the spike types could be used as return-to-play criteria for injured athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article it is argued that the growing field of the sociology of the senses has had a strong methodological focus on people's accounts of their sensorial experiences at the expense of studying the practical achievement of sense work as an interactional phenomenon. Recent work has called for more innovative methods in sensorial scholarship and the use of creative approaches to explore the senses. While applauding this move, in this article the authors show the importance of a focus on micro-behavioural actions in studying the senses. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, they analyse video recordings of near vision tests in optometry consultations illustrating the highly routinised, but also the embodied and improvised character of the actions through which the vision is made available for scrutiny. They argue that sensorial scholarship has sidelined the study of social context as a lived-order and demonstrate the importance of treating sensorial actions as routinised, embodied and improvisatory. The authors agree that using more creative methods would be valuable but caution against relying exclusively on methods that do not sufficiently contextualise the senses as a lived and practical social accomplishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Conversation analysis facilitates an examination of the communicative function of emoji. • Emoji perform communicative work related to the textual context. • Gestures indexed by emoji are important referents in their analysis. • Research should focus on the process of emoji selection and technology interfaces. Abstract This paper uses conversation analysis to explore the communicative functions of one emoji in a mobile reading community in China. In contrast to semiotic approaches to emoji that focus on their cultural signification, or that treat them as reflections of users' inner intensions, we analyse emoji as communication phenomena by exploring their relation to other textual actions in the production of text-talk. The emoji analysed here functioned as a laughter token, and performed specific interactional work related to laughter. We conclude that conversation analysis offers an important corrective to abstracted semiotic analysis and a useful resource for exploring the demonstrable meaning of emoji for interlocutors. However, we also emphasise the importance of capturing the process of composing messages, the challenges of dealing with the variety of forms that emoji take and their relation to gestural and other actions in face to face communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Patients with elevated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels have an increased risk of adverse short- and long-term outcomes after cardiac surgical procedures. Whether elevated HbA1c levels are associated with lower socioeconomic position (SEP) has been unknown. Methods All adult patients undergoing cardiac surgical procedures at Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas in 2014 (n = 567) were reviewed. Of those patients, 531 had a preoperative HbA1c level measured. HbA1c was delineated as 7% or lower or greater than 7%. The two aims of this study were to evaluate a possible association of HbA1c and SEP and to evaluate for a possible association of HbA1c levels and poor outcomes after cardiac surgical procedures. The primary postsurgical outcomes were infections and intensive care unit length of stay. Results HbA1c levels greater than 7% were associated with lower SEP ( p = 0.005) and with increased risk of infection postoperatively ( p < 0.001). Total hospital length of stay tended to be longer for patients with HbA1c greater than 7% ( p = 0.009). Conclusions Elevated HbA1c levels are associated with lower SEP. This association not only may hinder the ability to correct HbA1c levels, but also may impart a risk for elevated HbA1c levels. Additionally, patients who present for cardiac operations with HbA1c greater than 7% have an increased risk of postoperative infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an interactionist analysis of guitar pedal review videos this paper explores the communicative practices of product reviewing in YouTube. Focussing on one guitar pedal, the analysis reveals how reviewers positioned the pedal as an 'idealised object' and as part of the 'material good life' of guitarists. Reviewers' communicative strategies projected a sense of shared intersubjective experience of the pedal by bracketing out issues of knowledge, skill, and access to technology, and by constructing the vloggers' credentials as reviewers. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the structures of consumer cultures on YouTube, showing how reviewers communicatively construct audiences, products, themselves, and, more generally, the practices of material culture use in this specific art world. I argue that the interactionist perspective adopted here is an important and under-used framework for analysing consumer culture, and that it helps us to see how material culture is manufactured as a discursive, communicative act through the mundane activities of reviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problematic use of mobile phones among adolescents has not been widely studied. There are very few instruments for assessing potential technological addiction to mobile phones, or for categorizing different types of users or uses. The most widely used scale is the Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (MPPUS), which is used to study adult populations, and has been applied in various forms in international contexts. The aims of this study were to adapt the Spanish version of this scale (MPPUSA) to British adolescents, and then to estimate the prevalence of possible problematic users. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 1,529 secondary school pupils aged between 11 and 18 years, with 1,026 completed questionnaires being collected. The analysis showed that the factor and construct validity and reliability were comparable to those obtained in previous studies. The prevalence of problematic users among the students was 10%, and the typical problematic user tended to be an adolescent between 11 and 14 years old, studying in a public school, who considered themselves to be an expert user of this technology, who made extensive use of his/her mobile phone, and who attributed the same problem of use among their peers. These users presented notable scores in all the symptoms covered by the scale used to assess problematic use. In conclusion, the adaptation of the MPPUSA as a screening scale for British adolescents presents good sensitivity and specificity for detecting the main addictive symptoms proposed in this validated version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the sequential ordering of multi-modal discussions in real-time online classes in postgraduate education contexts. The article explores the ways that text and verbal talk are organized by the participants as inter-connecting modes of interaction. Focusing on Initiation, Response and Feedback sequences as an example of a form of exchange, the article shows that the interaction was comparatively disorderly where conducted across talk and text modes. For instance, written responses to questions or to encouragement turns often overlapped with verbal answers from other students or with encouragement turns from the tutor. However, through the withholding of speech turns, the close latching of speech to written talk, and the ceasing of written turns at points where the topics or speakers changed, the participants showed a concern with re-establishing sequential order across the modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contributes to conversation analytic understanding of openings in health-care consultations. It focuses on the case of optometry: a form of health-care practice in which an optometrist conducts checks of a patient's vision and eye health. Patients are advised to attend regularly for routine assessments and can also request a specific appointment at any time. Analysis of a corpus of 66 consultations shows what happens when the optometrist's opening question solicits the client's “problems” with their eyes. We find three types of patient response. Patients who have requested a specific appointment (most often) report a problem with their eyes and establish a problem-purpose encounter. Patients attending for a routinely timed appointment either report no problems and establish a routine-assessment purpose, or if they do have a problem, they delay reporting it or downplay it. We track through what happens subsequently. The findings have practical implications for diagnosis and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an ethnomethodological study of work practices in optometry, this paper provides an illustration of the processes involved in the analysis of video recordings of naturalistic data. The analytic perspective outlined here involves attempting to reconstruct the sense-making resources that are used by participants in real-world settings to constitute the environments they operate within. In this paper, we present a preliminary examination of the ways in which participants in one-to-one optometry consultations interactionally establish the readiness of a Distance Vision Test. This analysis is intended to offer an example of how the concern with the sequential organisation of action can be developed into a series of observations for further analysis in relation to a broader data corpus. The discussion that follows provides an overview of the perspective of ethnomethodology and a description of the strategies of analysis used in our project. In these ways, this paper aims to highlight the importance of video as a mechanism to the microanalysis of social praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper works through the methodological issues involved in treating "culture" and "interculturality" as interactionally demonstrable and observable phenomena in written online asynchronous discourse. In particular, the paper explores the ways that conversation analysis (CA) and its focus on sequentiality and membership categorization analysis might aid the analysis of culture as a textural interactional achievement. The paper argues that, while there are some clear differences between sequential talk and written asynchronous discourse, there are still interesting ways in which CA's analytic foci may be worked through in relation to online discourse. Both the concern with sequentiality and with membership categories may well help us to see how the construction of visible and recognizable intercultural discourse practices are accomplished through written modes in online forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Web-based technologies are increasingly being used to create modes of online learning for nurses but their effect has not been assessed in nurse education. Objectives: Assess whether participation in face-to-face discussion seminars or online asynchronous discussion groups had different effects on educational attainment in a web-based course. Design: Non-randomised or quasi-experimental design with two groups-students choosing to have face-to-face discussion seminars and students choosing to have online discussions. Setting: The Core Methods module of a postgraduate research methods course. Participants: All 114 students participating in the first 2yr during which the course teaching material was delivered online. Outcome: Assignment mark for Core Methods course module. Methods: Background details of the students, their choices of modules and assignment marks were collected as part of the routine course administration. Students’ online activities were identified using the student tracking facility within WebCT. Regression models were fitted to explore the association between available explanatory variables and assignment mark. Results: Students choosing online discussions had a higher Core Methods assignment mark (mean 60.8/100) than students choosing face-to-face discussions (54.4); the difference was statistically significant (t=3.13, df=102, p=0.002), although this ignores confounding variables. Among online discussion students, assignment mark was significantly correlated with the numbers of discussion messages read (Kendall''s τ b=0.22, p=0.050) and posted (Kendall''s τ b=0.27, p=0.017); among face-to-face discussion students, it was significantly associated with the number of non-discussion hits in WebCT (Kendall''s τ b=0.19, p=0.036). In regression analysis, choice of discussion method, whether an M.Phil./Ph.D. student, number of non-discussion hits in WebCT, number of online discussion messages read and number posted were associated with assignment mark at the 5% level of significance when taken singly; in combination, only whether an M.Phil./Ph.D. student (p=0.024) and number of non-discussion hits (p=0.045) retained significance. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that a research methods course can be delivered to postgraduate healthcare students at least as successfully by an entirely online method in which students participate in online discussion as by a blended method in which students accessing web-based teaching material attend face-to-face seminar discussions. Increased online activity was associated with higher assignment marks. The study highlights new opportunities for educational research that arise from the use of virtual learning environments that routinely record the activities of learners and tutors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviews research on learner and tutor interaction in asynchronous computer-mediated (ACM) conferences used in distance learning. The authors note claims made for the potential of ACM conferences to promote higher-order critical inquiry and the social construction of knowledge, and argue that there is a general lack of evidence regarding the actual achievement of these aims in such conferences. We present and discuss the relevant research literature currently available on the effects of social presence, the tutor's teaching and moderating strategies, and task type. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research in each of these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In two recent papers we overhauled the theory of ternary complementary pairs, focusing on questions relating to the possible weights of pairs, and special pairs from which all others can be derived, which we call “primitive.” Of particular interest at this time is a new refinement of the concept of primitivity, which necessitates some revisions to our tables. In this article we report on the state of the art with respect to primitive pairs and elaborate on some conjectures in light of new data. 30 new primitive pairs are given; the status of 12 previously “primitive” pairs is changed to “imprimitive.” [Copyright &y& Elsevier]