Are online news comments like face-to-face conversation?

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on the question of whether online news comments are like face-to-face conversation or not. It is a widespread view that online comments are like “dialogue”, with comments often being referred to as “conversations”. These assumptions, however, lack empirical back-up. In order to answer this question, we systematically explore register-relevant properties of online news comments using multi-dimensional analysis (MDA) techniques. Specifically, we apply MDA to establish what online comments are like by describing their linguistic features and comparing them to traditional registers (e.g. face-to-face conversation, academic writing). Thus, we tap theSFU Opinion and Comments Corpusand the Canadian component of theInternational Corpus of English. We show that online comments are not like spontaneous conversation but rather closer to opinion articles or exams, and clearly constitute a written register. Furthermore, they should be described as instances of argumentative evaluative language.