Insights into Adolescent Online Conflict through Qualitative Analysis of Online Messages

Abstract

Given adolescents' widespread use of online messaging and social media, as well as the prevalence of cyberbullying, analyzing adolescents' online messagebased communication topics and patterns is relevant to public health. To better describe conflict in adolescent online communication, this paper analyzes patterns of conflict in a dataset of adolescent online messages. We describe a qualitative methodology for analyzing these complex data, to expand understanding of adolescents' online conversations, and to identify how best to categorize conflict within online media datasets. In this study, 14,239 messages from 20 adolescents in the Northeast United States (of which 1,911 were coded) were analyzed using thematic analysis. Several distinct kinds of conflict and responses were identified. Conflict was either direct or indirect, serious or non-serious; it most often was indirect and serious, referenced either insults or romantic contacts, and was frequently related to in-person fights. Coding relied on understanding both textual contexts and referents.

Days with and without self‐injurious thoughts and behaviors: Impact of childhood maltreatment on adolescent online social networking

“…Both coders were in their early twenties and thus familiar with the current slang utilized by adolescents in their online social networking communication. Similar coding processes (e.g., two primary coders, primary investigator as consensus coder, both deductive and iterative coding) have been utilized previously for online social networking data (Bogen et al, 2018; Bogen, Bleiweiss, Leach, et al, 2019; Bogen, Bleiweiss, & Orchowski, 2019; Ranney et al, 2020).…”

Happiness and Sadness in Adolescents’ Instagram Direct Messaging: A Neural Topic Modeling Approach

“…The study showed that unsafe DMs were more emotionally charged and more provocative (Ali et al, 2022). In addition, finally, three studies provided a thematic analysis of DMs on various social media platforms (Dong et al, 2006;Koch et al, 2022;Ranney et al, 2020). One of these studies showed that conflicts in adolescents' DMs could be categorized as either direct versus indirect or serious versus nonserious (Ranney et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, finally, three studies provided a thematic analysis of DMs on various social media platforms (Dong et al, 2006; Koch et al, 2022; Ranney et al, 2020). One of these studies showed that conflicts in adolescents’ DMs could be categorized as either direct versus indirect or serious versus nonserious (Ranney et al, 2020). Another study found that DMs could be categorized into six topics: sports, pornography, games, travel, entertainment, and others (Dong et al, 2006).…”

“…To our knowledge, no study has focused on expressions of happiness and sadness in adolescents’ DMs. Although three studies (Dong et al, 2006; Koch et al, 2022; Ranney et al, 2020) did investigate themes in DMs, they did not look at the expression of happiness or sadness. Therefore, the first aim of this study is to investigate how many of adolescents’ DMs contain expressions of happiness and sadness (Research Question [RQ] 1).…”