Cover not available
Part of
Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions
Edited by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 256] 2015
► pp. 49–66

Participation structures in Twitter interaction

Arguing for the broadcaster role

In offering a new platform for electronically-mediated interaction, the Twitter medium brings with it new implications for participation. Building on Goffman’s (1981) production format, this paper argues for the role of broadcaster, a “followable” party that makes talk available to recipients, as a participant in Twitter interaction. Evidence from a corpus of tweets relating to the National Hockey League (NHL) is presented, showing that the broadcaster role can be separated from Goffman’s traditional roles of animator, author, and principal. The broadcaster, however, is shown to be held responsible for talk produced for the account, even when the broadcaster is demonstrably distinct from other production roles. Additionally, the broadcaster is shown to be a potential target of address in tweets from other Twitter users. This evidence suggests that users see the broadcaster as an active participant in the production of talk, and should be included in participation frameworks for Twitter interaction.

Published online: 12 February 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.256.03dra
References
Baym, Nancy K
2010 Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.Google Scholar
Berglund, Therese Örnberg
2009 “Multimodal Student Interaction Online: An Ecological Perspective.” ReCALL 21: 186–205. �DOI logo Google Scholar
Charitonos, Koula, Canan Blake, Eileen Scanlon, and Ann Jones
2012 “Museum Learning via Social and Mobile Technologies: (How) Can Online Interactions Enhance Visitor Experience?” British Journal of Educational Technology 43 (5): 802–819. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dayter, Daria
2013 “Twitter as a Means of Class Participation: Making Student Reading Visible.” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 1: 1–21.Google Scholar
Deller, Ruth A
2011 “Twittering on: Audience Research and Participation using Twitter.” Participations 8 (1): 216–245.Google Scholar
Gallant, Linda M., Cynthia Irizarry, Gloria Boone, and Gary L. Kreps
2011 “Promoting Participatory Medicine with Social Media: New Media Applications on Hospital Websites that Enhance Health Education and e-patients’ Voice.” Journal of Participatory Medicine 3. Accessed on October 25, 2013: [URL]Google Scholar
Gibson, James J
1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1963 Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings [Kindle edition]. Retrieved from Amazon.com.Google Scholar
1964 “The Neglected Situation.” American Anthropologist 66 (6): 133–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, Stephen, Tim Highfield, and Axel Bruns
2012 “More than a Backchannel: Twitter and Television.” In Audience Interactivity and Participation, ed. by Jose Manuel Noguera, 13–17. Brussels: COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies.Google Scholar
Holton, Avery, Summer Harlow, and Seth Lewis
2011 “The Evolution of Participatory Journalism.” In The Future of News: An Agenda of Perspectives, 2nd ed., ed. by Kelly Kaufhold, Amber Willard Hinsley, and Seth C. Lewis, 183–198. San Diego, CA: Cognella.Google Scholar
Honeycutt, Courtenay, and Susan Herring
2009 “Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter.” Proceedings of the Forty-Second Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press.
Hutchby, Ian
2001 “Technologies, Texts and Affordances.” Sociology 35: 441–456. DOI logo Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell
1972 “Models for the Interaction of Language and Social Life.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 35–71. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T
1996 “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, ed. by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 131–159. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Marius Rohde
2010 “Genres of Participation in Social Networking Systems: A Study of the 2009 Norwegian Parliamentary Election.” Proceedings of the Second International Conference on eParticipation . Lausanne, September.
Jones, Rodney H
2009 “ ‘Inter-Activity’: How New Media Can Help Us Understand Old Media.” Language and New Media: Linguistic, Cultural, and Technological Evolutions, ed. by Charley Rowe and Eva Lia Wyss, 13–32. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Junco, Reynol
2011 “The Relationship between Frequency of Facebook Use, Participation in Facebook Activities, and Student Engagement.” Computers & Education 58 (1): 162–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lange, Patricia G
2007 “Searching for the ‘You’ in ‘YouTube’: An Analysis of Online Response Ability.” Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings 1: 36–50. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C
1988 “Putting Linguistics on a Proper Footing: Exploration’s in Goffman’s Concepts of Participation.” Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, ed. by Paul Drew and Anthony J. Wootton, 161–227. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Licoppe, Christian
2004 “ ‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape.” Environment and Planning D 22 (1): 135–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcoccia, Michel
2004 “On-line Polylogues: Conversation Structure and Participation Framework in Internet Newsgroups.” Journal of Pragmatics 36: 115–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marwick, Alice E., and Danah Boyd
2010 “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13: 114–133. DOI logo Google Scholar
Murthy, Dhiraj
2012 “Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter.” Sociology 46 (6): 1059–1073. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Greg
2010 Discourse of Blogs and Wikis. London and New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, Anne
2006 Investigating Media Discourse. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pegoraro, Ann
2010 “Look Who’s Talking – Athletes on Twitter: A Case Study.” International Journal of Sport Communication 3: 501–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowe, Charley, and Eva Lia Wyss
2009 “Introduction.” In Language and New Media: Linguistic, Cultural, and Technological Evolutions, ed. by Charley Rowe and Eva Lia Wyss, 1–9. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ronald
1998 Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction : A Study of News Discourse. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Vitak, Jessica, Paul Zube, Andrew Smock, Caleb T. Carr, Nicole Ellison, and Cliff Lampe
2011 “It’s Complicated: Facebook Users’ Political Participation in the 2008 Election.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking 14 (3): 107–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Chovanec, Jan & Villy Tsakona
2018. Chapter 1. Investigating the dynamics of humor. In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor [Topics in Humor Research, 7], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2017. The digital agora of social media: Introduction. Discourse, Context & Media 19 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.