[Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis

[André Brock]

Alexander,

IMHO, i prefer discourse analysis for my own work on blogs/comments (i
actually use a variant of Critical Discourse Analysis).  I argue thusly
because, like others have mentioned, you need to contextualize the
discourses you examine - not only in terms of medium and medium-induced
conventions - but also WRT culture, gender, nationality, sexuality, and race
(there's more, but you already know that).

While content analysis can, in fact, be contexualized to include
sociopolitical influences on discourse, discourse analysis (to me) seems to
be a much more robust interpretive technique for understanding what
discoursants bring to bear as they discuss things near and dear to their
heart.

just my two cents...

André

Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 04:23:57 +0400
> From: Semenov Alexander <semenoffalex at googlemail.com>
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads:
>        discourse       analysis vs. conversation analysis
>
>
> Hello everybody,
> I'm interested in qualitative text analysis of posts and comment treads in
> LiveJournal. I've found previous request on this topic in the aoir
> archieves, but it was 2 years ago (
>
> http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017172.html
> ).
>
> But I still have some questions:
>
> 1) Which method would you prefer for such kind of analysis: discourse
> analysis or conversational analysis?
> 2) Are there any other artcles about qualitative text analysis of blog
> posts
> and comment threads?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Alexander Semenov.
> MA student
> Faculty of Sociology
> Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES)
> http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html
>
> Graduate Student in Sociology at
> State University - Higher School of Economics
> http://www.hse.ru/eng
>
>
>
-- 
Andre Brock
Assistant Professor - Library and Information Science/POROI
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242