Needles in a haystack : a new approach for identifying and assessing political talk in nonpolitical discussion forums

Graham, Todd (author)

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for politically-orientateddiscussion forums, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. People talk politics just about anywhere online from reality TV discussion forums to numerous other forum genres. Thus,the need to tap into those discussions is important if our aim is to provide a more comprehensive overview of the online discursive landscape. However, widening our scope of analysis presents us with a new set of diffi culties, namely, how do we identify political talk within the vast pool of threads and postings, and how do we assess such talk in light of the public sphere, while at the same time, taking into account its informal nature. The aim of this article is to tackle these questions by presenting a methodological approach, which attempts to detect, describe, and assess political talk in non-political discussion forums.

• Language: English
• Work type: Not categorized
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Year: 2008
• Number of pages: Str. 17-36
• Numbering: Vol. 15, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-76386
• UDC: 316.77:32
• ISSN on article: 1318-3222
• COBISS.SI-ID: 27433309
• Publication date in RUL: 21.12.2015

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Javnost = The public
• Shortened title: Javnost
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis, European Institute for Communication and Culture
• ISSN: 1318-3222
• COBISS.SI-ID: 40119808

Secondary language

• Language: Unknown

Abstract

Politični govor na spletu ni le domena politično usmerjenih razpravnih forumov, še zlasti ne vsakdanji politični govor, ki je bistven za javno sfero. Ljudje govorijo o politiki kjerkoli na spletu - od razprav o resničnostnih šovih do vrste drugih razpravnih žanrov. Potreba po upoštevanju teh razprav je pomembna, če hočemo zagotoviti bolj izčrpen pregled spletne diskurzivne pokrajine. Širjenje področja analize nas postavlja pred vrsto težav, na primer kako identificirati politični govor v ogromnem bazenu objav, kako presojati tak govor z vidika javne sfere in hkrati upoštevati njegov neformalni značaj. Članek se loteva teh vprašanj z metodološkim pristopom, ki poskuša identificirati, opisati in oceniti politični govor v nepolitičnih razpravnih forumih.