Abstract
Abstract This paper adopts a media-linguistic perspective to explore how liveblogs, specifically ‘live tickers’, contribute to the formation of episodic publics during parliamentary debates and investigations. Using a dataset of 45,332 journalistic entries from the Austrian online medium DerStandard.at, the mixed-method study unpacks the complex, multimodal dynamics that emerge from the interplay between individual entries and their presentation on the news website. Liveblogs are found to enable users to regularly track parliamentary activities, thereby reflecting the episodic structure of the event and emphasizing an impression of immediacy and collective experience. Importantly, liveblogs demonstrate a strong connection to current events, constantly updating themes and anticipating future developments. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the active engagement of users who are interested not only in the outcomes of parliamentary debates or inquiries but their entire progression. The observed differences in coverage between public and non-public sessions suggest a need for further research into different forms of quotation and recontextualization practices. Ultimately, this research highlights the unique role of liveblogs as venues for political participation and engagement, and offers novel insights into the structure, function and linguistic configuration of live digital publics.
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