“You might want to look up the definition of ‘continental breakfast’”: Other-initiated repair and community-building in health and weight loss blogs

Abstract

AbstractThis study examines other-initiated repair as what has been termed alight practice, demonstrating how it facilitates interactivity and moments of community creation online. Specifically, I analyze user comments on expert-written blogs that appear on an English-language weight loss website, showing how posters collaboratively initiate, accomplish, and show appreciation for repair activities. These activities, which are, as in face-to-face conversation, typically mitigated through various linguistic strategies, are aimed at aspects of blog text (including vocabulary and amount of information provided), as well as the choice of accompanying images. I show how various people – commenters, a person profiled in a blog, and bloggers – all may play roles in collaboratively accomplishing repair and thereby engage in the community. In addition, I suggest that repair not only facilitates participation, but also simultaneously serves as a means of highlighting shared expectations, or what have been calledcultural discourses, about expert-written blogs. In other words, in engaging in repair activities, participants create routine forms of interaction that also (re)affirm shared expectations among members of this community.