Strategies and tactics of online commenting

Abstract

This book aims to describe how distinct forms of civic online communication become established within online commenting. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, online commenting is constituted through people’s commenting practices, the inherent potentials or affordances of the commenting interfaces and through their assemblage in relatively durable networks. On each of these levels online commenting can be empirically described in order to assess its role as a form of civic communication in contemporary societies. Such an analysis not only investigates pre-defined forms of civic online communication that are derived from different models of democratic participation, but also addresses the previously identified research deficit in relation to the range of commenting practices that people engage in (cf. chapter 2).