The Use of Expressives in Online Political Talk: Impeding or Facilitating the Normative Goals of Deliberation?

Abstract

Net-based public sphere researchers have questioned whether the internet presents the public sphere with a new opportunity for the development of public spaces where free, equal and open deliberation among citizens can flourish. However, much of the research has operationalized a formal notion of deliberation thereby neglecting the expressive nature of everyday political talk. This study moved beyond a formal notion by also investigating the use of expressives within The Guardian (UK) political discussion forum. A content analysis was employed as the primary instrument for examination. Additional textual analyses were conducted on the use of expressives. The findings suggest that with the exception of humour expressives tended to impede political talk rather than facilitating it.

Comparación del valor democrático de las discusiones de Facebook entre perfiles de candidatos políticos españoles a las elecciones generales de 2011

“…First, it has disproportionally influenced the specific aspects of the political use of the Internet that are actually analyzed. Studies generally address existing political actors' and institutions' Internet practices, while the interactions among ordinary citizens are rather ignored by academia (Jenkins and Thornburn 2003;Graham 2010;Wright 2011). …”

Everyday political talk in the Internet-based public sphere

“…Moreover, once we move away from partisan-based newsgroups, a somewhat different picture emerges. For example, my own research of reader comment sections and reality TV, news media and government sponsored forums found that in all cases degrading exchanges -to lower in character, quality, esteem or rank another participant and/or participant's positionrepresented less than 15% of posts (Graham, 2010a(Graham, , 2010b(Graham, , 2012a(Graham, , 2012bGraham & Witschge, 2003;Graham & Wright, 2013). These findings are supported by other studies of various forum types (Hagemann, 2002;Halpern & Gibbs, 2013;Jensen, 2003;Papacharissi, 2004;Ruiz et al, 2011;Winkler, 2005).…”

“…Researchers have investigated informal political talk in a variety of online forums, which include (Usenet) newsgroups (Davis, 2005;Hill & Hughes, 1998;Papacharissi, 2004;Schneider, 1997;Wilhelm, 1999;Zhang, Cao, & Tran, 2013); news media sponsored forums -newspapers (Graham, 2010b;Schutz, 2000;Strandberg, 2008;Tanner, 2001;Tsaliki, 2002); forums hosted by political parties and governments -excluding e-consultations (Dunne, 2009;Graham & Witschge, 2003;Hagemann, 2002;Jankowski & Van Os, 2004;Winkler, 2005); online deliberative initiatives (Dahlberg, 2001b); comparisons between different types (Brants, 2002;Graham, 2011;Jensen, 2003); third spaces -non-political forums (Graham, , 2010a(Graham, , 2012a; other platforms such as chat (Stromer-Galley & Martinson, 2009), blogs (Koop & Jansen, 2009) and readers' comments (Graham, 2012b;Ruiz, Domingo, Micó, & Díaz-Noci, 2011); and social media network sites such as Facebook and YouTube (Halpern & Gibbs, 2013;Robertson, Vatrapu, & Medina, 2010). 4 Studies here focus on measuring the deliberativeness of political talk as a means of determining the extent to which the Internet is conducive to (particular) conditions of deliberation.…”

“…My own research, which has covered a variety of forum types from news media message boards to political talk in third spaces, has revealed that participants tend to engage with each other rather than talk past one another (Graham, 2010a(Graham, , 2010b(Graham, , 2011(Graham, , 2012aGraham & Witschge, 2003;Graham & Wright, 2013). For example, my analysis of over 3000 posts from the reader comment sections of the Guardian found that more than half of the posts were engaged in reciprocal exchange, which was typically rational and critical in nature (Graham, 2012b).…”

“…One of the most common findings is that online forums typically feature highly active minorities of content creators (Brants, 2002;Dahlberg, 2001b;Dunn, 2009, Graham, 2010a, 2010bJankowski & Van Os, 2004;Jensen, 2003;Koop & Jansen, 2009;Robertson et al, 2010;Schultz, 2000;Winkler, 2005). For example, Schneider's (1997) analysis of newsgroups found that only 5% of participants accounted for 80% of the messages, indicating substantial inequalities in the rate and distribution of participation.…”