In this article, we evaluate the ways in which computer-mediated communication (CMC) has thus far been conceptualized, proposing an alternative approach. It is argued that traditional perspectives ignore participants’ everyday understanding of media use and media characteristics by relying on an individualistic and cognitive framework. The SIDE model, while improving on the definition of what may count as ‘social’ in CMC, still disregards the way in which identity is constructed and managed in everyday talk and text. To fill this gap, we offer a discursive psychological approach to online interaction. Presented here are the materials from an online discussion forum on depression. It is shown that participants’ identities do not so much mirror their inner worlds but are discourse practices in their own right. More specifically, we demonstrate how participants attend to ‘contradictory’ normative requirements when requesting support, thus performing the kind of identity work typically obscured in cognitive models.

Adopting principles applied in discursive psychology and translated to suit the practice of participatory health education, we describe in this article the five steps of the discursive action method (DAM). With this method, adolescents are stimulated to explore their own everyday conversations to become consciously aware of how they talk about health issues with their peers. Using detailed accounts of adolescents' experiences with the method, we present some first indications of the kinds of results this method can achieve. We show that the strength of the method specifically lies in two closely related domains: (a) stimulating adolescents' attentiveness to interactional problems and strategies as they occur in their own everyday talk, and (b) operating as a catalyst for developing participatory health activities aimed at peers.

Background: Intensive care doctors have to find the right balance between sharing crucial decisions with families of patients on the one hand and not overburdening them on the other hand. This requires a tailored approach instead of a model based approach. Aim: To explore how doctors involve families in the decision-making process regarding life-sustaining treatment on the neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care. Design: Exploratory inductive thematic analysis of 101 audio-recorded conversations. Setting/participants: One hundred four family members (61% female, 39% male) and 71 doctors (60% female, 40% male) of 36 patients (53% female, 47% male) from the neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care of a large university medical center participated. Results: We identified eight relevant and distinct communicative behaviors. Doctors’ sequential communicative behaviors either reflected consistent approaches—a shared approach or a physician-driven approach—or reflected vacillating between both approaches. Doctors more often displayed a physician-driven or a vacillating approach than a shared approach, especially in the adult intensive care. Doctors did not verify whether their chosen approach matched the families’ decision-making preferences. Conclusions: Even though tailoring doctors’ communication to families’ preferences is advocated, it does not seem to be integrated into actual practice. To allow for true tailoring, doctors’ awareness regarding the impact of their communicative behaviors is key. Educational initiatives should focus especially on improving doctors’ skills in tactfully exploring families’ decision-making preferences and in mutually sharing knowledge, values, and treatment preferences.

This article explores the discursive uses of a self-quotation in adolescent talk. The self-quotation uses the quotative marker be + like to convey or project bold statements as part of a larger narrative. We will demonstrate how the preface leading up to the self-quotation is designed as hard to counter, and instructs the hearer how to understand what comes next. The self-quotation, on the other hand, constitutes the assessment as a `mere characterization' that provides the speaker with a number of opportunities for testing the proposed view. Speakers are thus able to bolster potentially controversial views against refutation while also giving them a preliminary status. These features make for an interesting conversational resource that enables speakers and recipients to engage in a collaborative process of putting potentially bold statements to the test.

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