Meaning within interactions: Constructing the issue in online commenting

Abstract

In this chapter I introduce the notion of interaction roles in order to differentiate the diverse ways in which people construct political and civic issues in their evolving comment interactions. The two previous empirical chapters focused on either the technology or the agency side of online commenting. The interface analysis depicted how commenting interfaces constitute pre-configured settings for people’s commenting practices, whereas the interaction analysis identified the typical commenting practices that people engage in. But commenters do not only engage in one set of commenting practices within one comment or one commenting thread.