Abstract
Social cues in online focus groups surface in the ways group members manipulate language, to signal their attitudinal shifts in position toward the group’s topics and what both moderators and members may have said. Their primary mode is task-based: their “job” is to respond to topics introduced by the focus group moderator; they also engage in “sidebar chat” among themselves. Using stance-shift analysis on a million-word corpus of online text genres, we identify 10 characteristics of online focus group chat, which may help researchers and retailers to identify when and how group participants might be strongly committed to what they have just written.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Quantitative Content Analysis: The frequency-based analysis of the content of text messages.
Stance-Shift Analysis: A multivariate identification of the location of rhetorical shifts in successive sections of a text.emoticon: The use of two or more typographical symbols to suggest emotion in online text, such as the combination of a colon and a right parenthesis to simulate a smile:)
OFGC Utterance: An utterance in an Online Focus Group Chat, typically a string of less than 10 words, ranging from half a line to two lines of text on a screen. Stance: The point of view of a speaker, including evaluative and affective components.
OFGC Utterance: An utterance in an Online Focus Group Chat, typically a string of less than 10 words, ranging from half a line to two lines of text on a screen. Stance: The point of view of a speaker, including evaluative and affective components.
Presence: In this chapter, the term is used to mean the sense or “feeling” that other participants are copresent in online interaction.
Quantitative Content Analysis: The frequency-based analysis of the content of text messages.
Stance-Shift Analysis: A multivariate identification of the location of rhetorical shifts in successive sections of a text.emoticon: The use of two or more typographical symbols to suggest emotion in online text, such as the combination of a colon and a right parenthesis to simulate a smile:)
Presence: In this chapter, the term is used to mean the sense or “feeling” that other participants are copresent in online interaction.
Text Chat: A synchronous exchange of written verbal messages in online or electronic environments.
Text Chat: A synchronous exchange of written verbal messages in online or electronic environments.
Positioning: How speakers frame their relationship to each other while interacting, that is, the person asking a question may thereby position the respondent as subordinate.
Positioning: How speakers frame their relationship to each other while interacting, that is, the person asking a question may thereby position the respondent as subordinate.