Digital Communication Basics
These serve as key platform-specific tools that define interaction patterns and communicative options.
Affordances
This term was coined to describe cultural units transmitted like genes. (bonus points for the man who coined it)
Meme (Dawkins)
In online worlds, this term refers to the graphic representation of the user.
Avatar
These symbols are used to group and contextualize content on platforms like Twitter.
Hashtags
This part of the identity triangle refers to affiliations like fandoms, professional communities, or online subcultures. (bonus points for the rest)
Group/community identity (gender, race,... and idiolect)
This term in pragmatics describes the sharing of online content originally created by someone else.
Rebroadcasting
Brockmann and Diehl describe memes as evolving through this playful form of digital interaction, where users remix content for fun or commentary.
Wasteful play
Hafner uses this theory to explain how users adopt roles and stances in discourse.
Positioning
Emoji, GIFs, and text formatting are examples of this kind of online communication.
Non-verbal communication
This social media behavior is often meant to provoke curiosity and emotional attention, despite saying very little.
Vaguebooking
Scott notes that social media platforms encourage this type of communication, which involves sharing thoughts, feelings, and updates as a way of participating.
Self-disclosure
Scott describes memes as doing this, when they convey personal or social commentary by adapting original forms.
Indexing meaning through metaphor
In sociocultural theory, identity is viewed not as static but as this.
fluid / evolving
According to Relevance Theory, clickbait succeeds by offering these two things:
High cognitive effects and low processing effort
Resemiotization occurs when this happens to a text.
Being turned into a meme, image macro, video etc.
According to Scott, this is the name of the theory that sees online communication as lacking crucial interpersonal cues.
"Cues filtered out" approach
This is the term for a group of related memes with shared structure or theme.
Meme family
Some case studies focused on identity play in virtual worlds. Name two.
Whyville / Moshi Monsters / Club Penguin
According to Scott, likes can sometimes be interpreted as this kind of act.
Indirect speech act or communicative act
These two terms refer to the process of making a piece of information into a text and taking a piece of text from one context and reusing or reshaping it in another, often seen in retweets, memes, or quoted replies.
Entextualization and retextualization
Name the four core layers of Herring’s framework for Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA).
Structure, meaning, interaction, and social behavior
According to Brockmann & Diehl, memes evolve through three communication logics. Name two.
play / political expression / cultural evolution
Barton and Lee argue that identity is constructed through a combination of these two resources.
Linguistic and semiotic
Typography choices in online writing influence meaning by guiding this interpretive process.
Inference
This analytical approach, used in Jones et al., focuses on how discourse is shaped by tools like phones, apps, and interfaces.
Mediated discourse analysis