'Making conversation': sequential integrity and the local management of interaction on Internet newsgroups

Argues for a detailed empirical investigation of newsgroup interaction. It presents a framework for analysis that emphasizes the machinic (machine-related) and human-related characteristics of newsgroup activity with the concept of "(human) orientation to the (machinic) default". By problematizing the notion of newsgroup "conversation", this paper reveals the "sequential integrity" of newsgroup practices through the detailed investigation of participants' "local management of interaction". Newsgroup interaction is asynchronous: participation does not occur in "real time" and participants are geographically dispersed. Potentially, therefore, participation could be chaotic and disordered, yet observation reveals it to be a highly ordered activity. A fundamental question, then, is how this interactional order is achieved - and achieved as conversational. Newsgroup activity is characterized by sequential integrity. Messages are constructed in such a way as to exhibit both relational features (between messages) and internal features (in the text of messages) that mimic and respect sequential ordering.

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