APJCR_2020_1_1_95

Article

Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 95-126
Abbreviation: APJCR
e-ISSN: 2733-8096
Publication date: 31 August 2020
Received: 13 May 2020 / Received in Revised Form: 31 July 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22925/apjcr.2020.1.1.95

A Novel Theory of Support in Social Media Discourse

Bazil Stanley Solomon (Oxford Brookes University)
Copyright 2020 APJCR

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper aims to inform people how to support each other on social media. It alludes to an architecture for social media discourse and proposes a novel theory of support in social media discourse. It makes a methodological contribution. It combines predominately artificial intelligence with corpus linguistics analysis. It is on a large-scale dataset of anonymised diabetes-related user’s posts from the Facebook platform. Log-likelihood and precision measures help with validation. A multi-method approach with Discourse Analysis helps in understanding any potential patterns. People living with Diabetes are found to employ sophisticated high-frequency patterns of device-enabled categories of purpose and content. It is with, for example, linguistic forms of Advice with stance-taking and targets such as Diabetes amongst other interactional ways. There can be uncertainty and variation of effect displayed when sharing information for support. The implications of the new theory aim at healthcare communicators, corpus linguists and with preliminary work for AI support-bots. These bots may be programmed to utilise the language patterns to support people who need them automatically.

Keywords

AI, Facebook, Linguistics, Purpose, Support

References

Abdallah, Z. S., Carman. M., & Haffari, G. (2017). Multi-domain evaluation framework for named entity recognition tools. Computer Speech and Language, 43, 34-55.

Adophis, S., & Knight, D. (2020). English language and the digital humanities. In Adophis, S., & Knight, D. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities (pp. 1-3). Oxford: Taylor & Francis.

Biber, D., & Finegan, E. (1989). Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect. Text, 9(1), 93-124.

Blei, D. M. (2012). Probabilistic topic models. Communications of the ACM, 55(4), 77-84.

Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., & Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3(1), 993-1022.

Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In Englebretson, R. (Ed.), Stance-taking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp. 139-182). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Davison, K. P., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Virtual narratives: Illness representations in online support groups. In Petrie, K. J., & Weinman, J. A. (Eds.), Perceptions of Health and Illness: Current Research and Applications (pp. 463–486). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Goldsmith, D. (2009). Soliciting advice: The role of sequential placement in mitigating face threat. Communication Monograph, 67(1), 1-19.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English. Journal of Linguistics, 3 (1), 177-274.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Harvey, K., & Koteyko, N. (2013). Exploring Health Communication: Language in Action. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Hunt, D., & Koteyko, N. (2015). What was your blood sugar reading this morning? Representing diabetes self-management on Facebook. Discourse and Society, 26(4), 445-463.

Krishnamurthy, R. (1996). Ethnic, racial and tribal: The language of racism? In Caldas-Coulthard, C. R., & Coulthard, M. (Eds.), Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 129–49). London: Routledge.

Lehmann, W. (1987). Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Locher, M. A., & Limberg. H. (2012). Advice in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Martin, J. R., & White. P. R. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Martin, J. R. (2000). Beyond exchange: APPRAISAL systems in English. In Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (Eds.), Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse (pp. 142–75), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Partington, A. (2008). The armchair and the machine: Corpus-assisted discourse studies. In Taylor Torsello, C., Ackerley, K. & Castello, E. (Eds.), Corpora for University Language Teachers (pp. 189-213). Bern: Peter Lang.

Sillence, E. (2013). Giving and receiving peer advice in an online breast cancer support group. Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking, 16(6), 480-485.

Smith, C., Crook. N., Dobnik. S., & Charlton, D. (2011). Interaction strategies for an affective conversational agent. Presence: Teleoperators Virtual Environments, 20(5), 395-411.

Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, 7(3), 321-326.

Tannen, D., & Trester. A.M. (2013). Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media. Washington: Georgetown University Press.

Townsend, L., & Wallace, C. (2017). The ethics of using social media data in research: a new framework. In Woodfield, K. (Ed.), The Ethics of Online Research: Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity (pp.189-207). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

Zappavigna, M. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum.

The Author’s Address

First and Corresponding Author
Bazil Stanley Solomon
PhD Student
Department of Artificial Intelligence
Oxford Brookes University
111 Eastmere, Liden, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN3 6LG, UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail: p0011188@brookes.ac.uk

☞ How to submit your manuscript to APJCR.