Approaching social media argumentation from a linguistics-informed perspective

Cock, Barbara De; Greco, Sara

doi:10.4324/9781003502296-7

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Book chapter

Approaching social media argumentation from a linguistics-informed perspective : methodological aspects

Cock, Barbara De Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Greco, Sara ORCID Istituto di argomentazione, linguistica e semiotica (IALS), Facoltà di comunicazione, cultura e società, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera

2025

Published in:

Qualitative Research Methods in Argumentation Studies. - Routledge. - 2025, p. 111-126

English This chapter discusses various methodological aspects of approaching social media argumentation from a linguistics-informed perspective. It first focuses on the diversity of platforms and messages each platform can host, but also on the ever-changing nature of technical constraints and affordances of these platforms, making the analysis of social media argumentation particularly complex. While many of these platforms are used internationally, legislation on privacy as well as ethical guidelines may be partially specific to certain geographic areas, which makes collecting and analysing social media data subject to varied constraints. The chapter further discuss the challenges related to the presence of a wide variety of activity types on social media, as well as to the (ever growing) presence of multimodality. Finally, a more detailed discussion of the place of agentivity in the analysis of argumentation in social media as well as of the argumentative role of hashtags offer a more detailed insight into a linguistics-informed perspective on social media argumentation.

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