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Article published In:
Advances in the Study of Social Action in Online Interaction
Edited by Valeria Sinkeviciute
[Internet Pragmatics 7:1] 2024
► pp. 137–160

“Facebook’s about to know, Karen”

Mobilising social media to sanction public conduct

ORCID logo | Leeds Trinity University
ORCID logo | University of Oxford
ORCID logo | Loughborough University

This paper explores the social action of sanctioning an interlocutor’s conduct in public spaces through social media. Using membership categorisation analysis (Hester and Eglin 1997), we examine how, in offline face-to-face disputes filmed by one party, interactants deploy the name ‘Karen’ to sanction someone and threaten the transposition of the recording onto social media to impose accountability to the public at large. Our findings show how sanctioning through categorising an individual as a ‘Karen’ is interactionally achieved through framing conduct as entitled or otherwise problematic, distinguishing in-situ production of ‘Karen’ from a delivery that is perceptually unavailable to an interlocutor. We explore how social media functions as a resource to shape the ongoing encounter by orienting to the camera, and thus the online audience, as an external authority.

Keywords: membership categorisation analysis, sanctioning, transgression, degradation ceremonies, accountability, dispute, Karen
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Accountability, sanctioning and degrading in social interaction
  • 3.‘Karen’ as a membership category
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1 In-situ categorisation available and conflictual to the interlocutor
    • 5.2Categorisation in absentia
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 22 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00104.wal
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