Online Discussion Threads Research Articles

A Case for Using Online Discussion Forums in Critical Psychological Research

Online forums provide a wealth of publicly accessible data and have proven particularly useful for critical psychologists wishing to examine naturalistic data on a wide range of social phenomena. This article begins by considering the use of online discussion forums for critical discursive psychological research and outlines ethical debates regarding their use (particularly in light of past and current British Psychological Society guidelines). To demonstrate how such data can be used in critical psychology I provide an illustrative example of a discursive analysis of a single online discussion thread taken from a diabetes newsgroup that examines anti-social online behaviours in the form of “trolling,” “flaming,” and heterosexism.

Filtering big data from social media – Building an early warning system for adverse drug reactions

ObjectivesAdverse drug reactions (ADRs) are believed to be a leading cause of death in the world. Pharmacovigilance systems are aimed at early detection of ADRs. With the popularity of social media, Web forums and discussion boards become important sources of data for consumers to share their drug use experience, as a result may provide useful information on drugs and their adverse reactions. In this study, we propose an automated ADR related posts filtering mechanism using text classification methods. In real-life settings, ADR related messages are highly distributed in social media, while non-ADR related messages are unspecific and topically diverse. It is expensive to manually label a large amount of ADR related messages (positive examples) and non-ADR related messages (negative examples) to train classification systems. To mitigate this challenge, we examine the use of a partially supervised learning classification method to automate the process. MethodsWe propose a novel pharmacovigilance system leveraging a Latent Dirichlet Allocation modeling module and a partially supervised classification approach. We select drugs with more than 500 threads of discussion, and collect all the original posts and comments of these drugs using an automatic Web spidering program as the text corpus. Various classifiers were trained by varying the number of positive examples and the number of topics. The trained classifiers were applied to 3000 posts published over 60days. Top-ranked posts from each classifier were pooled and the resulting set of 300 posts was reviewed by a domain expert to evaluate the classifiers. ResultsCompare to the alternative approaches using supervised learning methods and three general purpose partially supervised learning methods, our approach performs significantly better in terms of precision, recall, and the F measure (the harmonic mean of precision and recall), based on a computational experiment using online discussion threads from Medhelp. ConclusionsOur design provides satisfactory performance in identifying ADR related posts for post-marketing drug surveillance. The overall design of our system also points out a potentially fruitful direction for building other early warning systems that need to filter big data from social media networks.

Playing Free in the Polish People’s Republic: Making Do Without Consumerism

This paper examines contemporary recollections of childhood under communism in urban Poland (1960s–89). In a deliberate move to try and tell this history from the point of view of those who were children at the time, the paper tries to focus on memories reshaped by contemporary issues. The key sources of data are an online discussion thread on the ‘Virtual Poland’ website and an online survey conducted through the use of social media. Two interesting themes emerged. First, despite relative ‘objective’ material equality and an overall sense of security, children and young people growing up in the second half of the forty-four years of communist rule developed an ambivalent and complex relationship with ‘materialism’. Second, despite strict ideological control over education, culture, and all aspects of social life, communism failed to colonise children’s free time. Compared to adults whose lives were dominated and expression limited, children enjoyed much freedom to explore, socialise and take risks to a degree greater than children can today.

Ações Coletivas e Tecnologia da Informação: Efeitos Indutores à Configuração dos Coletivos Inteligentes

Comunidades de prática (CoP) são contextos propícios para o surgimento de coletivos inteligentes, que são espaços voltados para a interação. O caso evidenciado neste estudo exemplifica como o Conselho Nacional das Entidades de Provedores de Serviços de Internet (CONAPSI) apresenta aspectos similares aos das CoP e, logo, desenhou-se como objetivo norteador da investigação analisar como as ações coletivas suportadas pela tecnologia da informação caracterizam-se como elementos indutores à ascensão das CoP a coletivos inteligentes. Para dar suporte ao estudo de caso, a fundamentação teórica trouxe definições e características das comunidades de prática, dos coletivos inteligentes e das tecnologias da informação que apoiam grupos. Na investigação, foram empreendidas análises documentais em listas de discussão eletrônicas, tratadas com estatística descritiva, e em entrevistas com representantes do Conselho, interpretadas com análise de conteúdo. Os resultados demonstram que o uso de listas de discussão eletrônicas impulsiona o surgimento de espaços virtuais de convivência e, consequentemente, coletivos inteligentes virtuais.

Induced lexico-syntactic patterns improve information extraction from online medical forums.

To reliably extract two entity types, symptoms and conditions (SCs), and drugs and treatments (DTs), from patient-authored text (PAT) by learning lexico-syntactic patterns from data annotated with seed dictionaries. Despite the increasing quantity of PAT (eg, online discussion threads), tools for identifying medical entities in PAT are limited. When applied to PAT, existing tools either fail to identify specific entity types or perform poorly. Identification of SC and DT terms in PAT would enable exploration of efficacy and side effects for not only pharmaceutical drugs, but also for home remedies and components of daily care. We use SC and DT term dictionaries compiled from online sources to label several discussion forums from MedHelp (http://www.medhelp.org). We then iteratively induce lexico-syntactic patterns corresponding strongly to each entity type to extract new SC and DT terms. Our system is able to extract symptom descriptions and treatments absent from our original dictionaries, such as 'LADA', 'stabbing pain', and 'cinnamon pills'. Our system extracts DT terms with 58-70% F1 score and SC terms with 66-76% F1 score on two forums from MedHelp. We show improvements over MetaMap, OBA, a conditional random field-based classifier, and a previous pattern learning approach. Our entity extractor based on lexico-syntactic patterns is a successful and preferable technique for identifying specific entity types in PAT. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to extract SC and DT entities from PAT. We exhibit learning of informal terms often used in PAT but missing from typical dictionaries.

The Effect of Structured Divergent Prompts on Knowledge Construction

Discussion forums are a widely used activity in online courses. However, knowledge construction within online discussion rarely reaches higher levels. Therefore, it is important to understand which aspects of online discussion encourage learning and increase knowledge construction. This paper investigates the effect three Structured Divergent prompts (playground prompts, brainstorm prompts, and focal prompts) have on knowledge construction as compared to Convergent prompts. Participants (N=58) were required to post in an online discussion thread during a graduate education course at a private university. The Interaction Analysis Model was used to determine the levels of knowledge construction demonstrated within students’ posts. The posts were given a score using the following codes: 0-no post/no understandable post; 1-sharing information, 2-disagreeing; 3-negotiation of meaning; 4-testing co-construction; 5-agreement of the constructed meaning. The analysis revealed that two of the three Structured Divergent prompts (focal and brainstorm) yielded significantly higher levels of knowledge construction as compared to Convergent prompts.

Waging a successful library funding campaign: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify common arguments and points of resistance to library development projects, and to outline effective political and communication strategies, which can be used by library administrators and supporters when pursuing funding campaigns. Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzed media messages from local newspaper and radio stations, including open comments posted in online discussion threads, over a one-year period. Interviews were also conducted with the library's director and foundation development officer. Findings – Analysis of media coverage drew out primary points of resistance, while the interviews provided strategies utilized to counteract anti-library rhetoric. Research limitations/implications – Further comparison with other library funding campaigns is needed. Particular areas to be studied include the relationship between the tone of online discussion forum posts and actual voting results; also, the impact of strongly opinionated posters on other participants. Practical implications – Library administrators seeking public support should strongly consider the following points which contributed to the success of the campaign analyzed in this article: The need to understand common public responses and points of resistance to proposed library projects. The importance of a supportive city council. The need to reduce uncertainty about potential physical locations. Understanding the distinction between political vs marketing campaigns. Identifying potential supporters, regardless of whether they were library users. Originality/value – This study is important because in seeking public support for major projects, administrators must be prepared to counter common anti-library messages. Strategies undertaken in this campaign may be generalized to libraries of other types.

Threading the Discussion: A Model to Examine the Quality of Posts in an Online Learning Environment

The design of online learning courses offered in a teacher education program and with post-graduate degrees in education varies greatly by course focus, instructor experience, and availability of suitable and accessible platform software. Many online course instructors include asynchronous topic-based discussions in their course expectations for students. However, it is an ongoing discussion among the online professorship as to ways they might encourage increased depth and thoughtful contributions to the online community’s learning by engaging in threaded online discussions. This paper provides and overview of a model for online learning, as derived from recent research and proposes a framework for examining two aspects of online discussion threads that may be posted by student participants. First, a framework is provided that might be given to online student participants to guide their contributions to the discussions. Second, a list of possible contents of online discussions is presented and suggestions are made for how the online professorship might use this list of possibilities to guide peer and self-evaluation of online contributions.

‘Criticism’: Notes on the Circulation of Cultural Judgement

This article explores some aspects of ‘criticism’ as an activity occurring across diverse areas of culture, one which includes both ‘professional’ academic and journalistic reviewing of the arts and increasingly extends to a range of ‘amateur’ bloggers and online discussion threads. It looks at the definition, characteristics and functions of ‘criticism’ as a term indicating practices of interpretation and judgement, located within varying contexts of cultural ‘authority’ and cultural consumption. In exploring factors of change and their implications it refers to recent research in the sociology of culture, journalism studies, film studies and television studies in order to suggest that further attention to the shifting varieties of critical space, critical voice and critical language would be timely and productive.

Promoting Critical Thinking in Online Discussion Threads: Lessons Learned Teaching Economics

This study investigates factors that promote substantive posts and higher order critical thinking in online discussions. The authors compared weekly discussion threads from two online Principles of Macroeconomics courses. One class was considered a low-structure class while the other class was considered a more structured class. Students’ posts were coded following the Gilbert and Dabbagh (2005) coding system. The codes were mapped to Bloom’s Taxonomy. A comparison of means indicate that there was an increase in mean substantive posts from 72 percent in 2008 to 89 percent in 2011. There was an increase in the percentage of posts in higher levels of critical thinking from 11 percent in 2008 to 60 percent in 2011. Analysis of student and instructor posting patterns revealed that structured instructor posts and having a “By Wednesday” requirement promote meaningful online discussions and increased substantive student posts in the higher order critical thinking category. This approach links substantive and quality students’ posts to students’ understanding of the core learning outcomes for the course using Bloom’s taxonomy.

A likelihood-based framework for the analysis of discussion threads

Online discussion threads are conversational cascades in the form of posted messages that can be generally found in social systems that comprise many-to-many interaction such as blogs, news aggregators or bulletin board systems. We propose a framework based on generative models of growing trees to analyse the structure and evolution of discussion threads. We consider the growth of a discussion to be determined by an interplay between popularity, novelty and a trend (or bias) to reply to the thread originator. The relevance of these features is estimated using a full likelihood approach and allows to characterize the habits and communication patterns of a given platform and/or community.

On market forces and adjustments: acknowledging consumer creativity through the aesthetics of ‘debadging’

This paper explores the social dynamics by means of which market forces are enacted at the level of everyday consumption. In particular, it draws on Holt's (2002) notion that as ‘unruly bricoleurs’, consumers kick-start processes of market adjustment and innovation through improvising ways to negotiate the demands of daily life. In this way, consumers can become active players in realising new possibilities for identity construction and empowerment that involve the creative re-appropriation of marketer-based meaning. To investigate those issues, we turn to a virtual community in the empirical setting of car customisation. Over an eight-month period, an internet-based methodology generated textual observations of online posting activity on five internet newsgroups attracting those interested in the particular pursuit of car modification. Participants used those web-forums to share information, passions, and enthusiasms. Analysis shows that grounded aesthetics function as vehicles for creativity and the reworking of dominant market logics (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). We conclude that online discussion threads offer valuable access to the emergent interplay of discursive resources in circulation among virtual communities and that this has implications for the conduct of environmental scanning. The paper illustrates how the discursive resource-base is nurtured, sustained, and transformed through various interpellations, including performing claims to prestige and self-defining distinctions, as well as constructing narratives of personal history and social dynamics.

Asynchronous online discussion thread development: examining growth patterns and peer‐facilitation techniques

AbstractThis study extends the research on asynchronous online discussion (AOD) by providing a perspective on: (1) the growth patterns of discussion threads and (2) the influence of peer‐ or student‐facilitation techniques on thread development. Using the Pointing, Questioning, Resolving and Summarizing (PQRS) facilitation techniques framework, the threaded discussions of seven AOD forums were carefully mapped out and each message in the postings was examined to determine the type of facilitation techniques applied. Results suggest that an online discussion thread grows either one of three patterns: a ‘short thread pattern’, an ‘extended thread pattern’ with an elongated structure or a ‘split thread pattern’ with a broad structure. Results also suggest that the use of Resolving and Summarizing facilitation techniques tends to foster early thread termination. Understanding how each PQRS student‐facilitation technique impacts thread development reinforces the need to combine the use of ‘questioning’ techniques with other facilitation techniques to enhance thread continuity. We end by discussing some possible implications and issues for future research.

Discovering genres of online discussion threads via text mining

As course management systems (CMS) gain popularity in facilitating teaching. A forum is a key component to facilitate the interactions among students and teachers. Content analysis is the most popular way to study a discussion forum. But content analysis is a human labor intensity process; for example, the coding process relies heavily on manual interpretation; and it is time and energy consuming. In an asynchronous virtual learning environment, an instructor needs to keep monitoring the discussion forum from time to time in order to maintain the quality of a discussion forum. However, it is time consuming and difficult for instructors to fulfill this need especially for K12 teachers. This research proposes a genre classification system, called GCS, to facilitate the automatic coding process. We treat the coding process as a document classification task via modern data mining techniques. The genre of a posting can be perceived as an announcement, a question, clarification, interpretation, conflict, assertion, etc. This research examines the coding coherence between GCS and experts’ judgment in terms of recall and precision, and discusses how we adjust the parameters of the GCS to improve the coherence. Based on the empirical results, GCS adopts the cascade classification model to achieve the automatic coding process. The empirical evaluation of the classified genres from a repository of postings in an online course on earth science in a senior high school shows that GCS can effectively facilitate the coding process, and the proposed cascade model can deal with the imbalanced distribution nature of discussion postings. These results imply that GCS based on the cascade model can perform as an automatic posting coding system.

Erosion Control Measures

Erosion control measures are intended to prevent and/or reduce movement of eroded soil sediments off-site/land. Selection of the proper erosion control measure must take into consideration the magnitude and type of erosion, as well as the resources available for implementation. This lesson will consider various control measures used to prevent erosion and minimize its effects on soil resources, water and air quality, and human health. It will discuss erosion control practices for both cropland and urban environments. The impact of various control measures on erosion factors will be demonstrated with exercises using an interactive Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) calculator. The lesson is written to target educational needs of lower-level undergraduate students and is open for the use by the public and educational institutions. Depending on the goals/objectives of a course, training, or workshop, part or all sections of the lesson can be used. Upon completing this lesson, a student should handle the following: Describe erosion control measures on urban land. Describe erosion control measures for cropped environments. Demonstrate effects of erosion management practices on annual soil loss using the USLE erosion calculator. Self-paced questions (“thinking questions”) are embedded within the lesson and are also available in printable worksheet format at the beginning of each page. These self-paced or thinking questions are intended to generate discussion. They can be used in classroom small group discussion. If the course is via distance and the lesson is used to support course objectives, the questions can be used as online discussion threads. Objective questions focusing on the fundamentals or principles of soil erosion and its impacts can be developed as an assessment tool. A local, national, international erosion problem can be used as a case-study project for students to apply erosion and erosion control practices.

Scaffolding Critical Reflection in Online Discussions

A teacher educator uses the methodology of a design experiment to compare patterns and levels of reflection in two semesters of her students” e-mail discussions about field experiences in urban schools. Analysis of discussion transcripts during the earlier semester revealed that higher levels of reflection were rare. With a number of changes in both the design and level of support for the discussions, students during the second semester were more inclined to write at higher levels of reflection. Important scaffolds for higher levels of reflection seemed to be tailored and general questioning from the instructor and peers, critical readings on problematic issues and inequities in urban schools, and certain online discussion threads where students were jointly analyzing sociopolitical and moral aspects of critical incidents in the field. In light of this study, suggestions are offered for future use of electronic exchanges in teacher education courses and programs.