Dynamic interactions in blogs and the Usenet

Lewandowska-tomaszczyk, B. (2011). Dynamic interactions in blogs and the Usenet . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: It is argued in the present paper that blogs and the Usenet exchanges on the internet are a prototypical instance of the interchangeability design feature of language and human communication: the speaker interchanges his/her role with the addressee and the exchanges develop dynamically during the interaction. The availability of user-generated content stored in Usenet archives and in blogs makes it possible to conduct an analysis of the shifting attitudes of media audiences towards real life events and problems encountered. Since all such messages come with explicit annotation of the time they were first published, it is possible to correlate the predominant sentiments of Usenet members with those expressed in the media contents published in the same or immediately preceding time period (cf. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Tomaszczyk 2010). In this paper selected qualitative and quantitative measures will be discussed and exemplified (cf. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & Dziwirek 2009, Dziwirek & Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010) to perform an analysis of a sample of the Polish blog texts and Usenet archives and contrast them with the English- language ones to uncover the dynamism of the internet interactions. The internet language samples will be juxtaposed to samples in the press referring to the same real time event and problems widely discussed publicly such as e.g. equal rights for men and women and their representation.