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The main purpose of this study has been to explore and determine how the journalistic work was used by internet users to start and keep a discussion on the internet going. We started in the aftermath of a local arson in a town of Sweden, where a discussion on the internet forum Flashback and the local newspapers commentary fields was raised. We have used these discussions to study what part the journalistic work play in these events. To do that we used a critical discourse analysis and a rhetoric analysis to investigate how these discussions use news articles to make their point. We divided the comments into four different categories, which are comments about understandings of the event, comments that talked about the matters of fact, criticism pointed at the newspaper and comments that identify the offenders. The result of the analysis shows that both forums use journalistic work as facts in their discussions. Both also use earlier articles that were written before the arson, to make their point in the discussion.

The main purpose of this study has been to explore and determine how the journalistic work was used by internet users to start and keep a discussion on the internet going. We started in the aftermath of a local arson in a town of Sweden, where a discussion on the internet forum Flashback and the local newspapers commentary fields was raised. We have used these discussions to study what part the journalistic work play in these events. To do that we used a critical discourse analysis and a rhetoric analysis to investigate how these discussions use news articles to make their point. We divided the comments into four different categories, which are comments about understandings of the event, comments that talked about the matters of fact, criticism pointed at the newspaper and comments that identify the offenders. The result of the analysis shows that both forums use journalistic work as facts in their discussions. Both also use earlier articles that were written before the arson, to make their point in the discussion.