This book, written by Dr Matteo Farina, explores how people communicate on Facebook. It addresses questions like: is there a clear organisation that characterises conversations that take place on Facebook or do Facebook conversations consist of messages that randomly follow one after the other? If so, what is this organisation? Facebook and Conversation Analysis: The Structure and Organization of Comment Threads (2018) applies concepts and ideas of Conversation Analysis (CA) to describe the structure of comment threads, the “conversations” that take place on Facebook. CA is a methodological approach which is normally used to explore the structure of spoken conversations, however, Farina has turned it towards Facebook comment threads. He uses CA to provide clear and important insights into the organisation of Facebook interactions. He shows that comment threads are not made of random messages, but they have a clear structure. This structure is based on the actions performed by Facebook users in comments published within comment threads. In other words, Farina claims that people perform actions when they post messages on Facebook such as questions, responses, apologies, tellings and so on.
Facebook and Conversation Analysis: The Structure and Organization of Comment Threads, has received highly favourable reviews from Linguist List and CALICO, and was the 2018 bestselling monograph across Bloomsbury’s Linguistics List. In his book, Farina explains that it is possible to understand the structure of Facebook interactions by examining the actions performed in messages posted in comment threads. This book is recommended to anyone interested in applied linguistics, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, and especially readers interested in understanding how people communicate in social media.
About the author:
Dr Matteo Farina is a Casual Course Coordinator at The University of Adelaide and Flinders University. His research is in the fields of Applied Linguistics and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Matteo applies concepts and ideas of Conversation Analysis (CA) to investigate how people communicate in everyday social interactions. He is especially interested in studying online interactions, like Facebook comment threads.
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