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ABSTRACT
Net-based public sphere researchers have examined online deliberation in numerous ways. However, most studies have focused exclusively on political discussion forums. This article moves beyond such spaces by analyzing political talk from an online forum dedicated to reality television. The purpose is to examine the democratic quality of political talk that emerges in this space in light of a set of normative criteria of the public sphere. The analysis also moved beyond an elite model of deliberation by investigating the use of expressives (humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgments). The findings reveal that participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. It was a space where the use of expressives played a significant role in enhancing such talk.
Acknowledgments
This article is based on my dissertation (2009) completed at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), and is available at the University of Amsterdam's Digital Academic Repository (ID 314852): http://dare.uva.nl/record/314852.
Notes
1. I would like to thank the anonymous referees and guest editors Stephen Coleman and Giles Moss for their insightful feedback and comments.
2. Drawing from Habermas, CitationDahlberg (2004) provides another comprehensive set of public sphere criteria.
3. There are 11 conditions. However, discursive freedom, sincerity, and structural autonomy and equality were omitted due to the scope of this article. See Chapter 2 in CitationGraham (2009) for a complete account.
4. CitationBarnes (2005) and CitationBarnes, Knops, Newman, and Sullivan's (2004) analyses of citizen deliberation offline found that humor, storytelling, and greeting played a significant role in facilitating political talk.
5. See also CitationColeman and Blumler (2009) and CitationFreelon's (2010) arguments for adopting more flexible approaches to examining online deliberation in the net-based public sphere.
6. The data were taken from all threads originating between January and March 2005 within the sub-forum Wife Swap. The data were retrieved in November 2005 from http://community.channel4.com/groupee/forums/a/cfrm/f/31060416. The data are available upon request.
7. An illustration of the categories (using examples from the Wife Swap forum) is available in CitationGraham (2008, pp. 22–23).
8. More information regarding the research design and methodology is available in CitationGraham (2009, pp. 41–65).
9. The coding categories were not mutually exclusive. A single post may have contained multiple message types.
10. A single argument may have used multiple forms of supporting evidence.
11. A systematic account of the analyses conducted here is available in CitationGraham (2009, pp. 61–63).
12. Fifty-five postings were not included because they were nonpolitical and/or incoherent.
13. An in-depth analysis of the topics and triggers of political talk in the Wife Swap forum is available in CitationGraham and Harju (2011).
14. A posting containing more than one argument was only counted once, and this likewise applied to assertions.
15. Out the 15 coherent lines, five were nonpolitical (39 postings) and ten were political (233 postings).
16. A posting was coded as a reply if it quoted another message, cited another participant, or if it clearly interacted with the content of another posting.
17. All call signs have been replaced with invented ones.
18. There were 28 acknowledgments identified. The total percentage does not add to 100 due to rounding.
19. See also CitationWright's (2011) recommendations for future online deliberation research.
20. CitationKies's (2010) detailed empirical analysis of online deliberation is one of the few exceptions.