Conspiracy theories are often disqualified as inadequate and deliberate forms of misinformation. In this analysis, we engage with a specific case, the conspiracy theory developed on an online New Right forum called Q about the so-called "MAGA Kid incident" with focus on its circulation and uptake on Facebook. Drawing on…

The contexts of social and political polarization are generating new forms of communication that affect the digital public sphere. In these environments, different social and political actors contribute to extreme their positions, using bots to create spaces for social distancing where hate speech and incivility have a place, a phenomenon that…

This discourse analysis study examines the final moments of selected online sermons delivered by America's leading evangelical pastors and speakers, paying particular attention to the language employed in the presentation of Christian gospel tenets, the public invitation for salvation, the altar call that identifies new followers, and the…

Young people's conversations about environmental and sustainability issues in social media and their educational implications are under-researched. Understanding young people's meaning-making in social media and the experiences they acquire could help teachers to stage pluralistic and participatory approaches to classroom discussions about the…

The present study makes the case that the individual constituents of internet self-efficacy--search self-efficacy, communication self-efficacy, organisation self-efficacy, differentiation self-efficacy, and reactive/generative self-efficacy--may be of differential importance in predicting internet anxiety within web-assisted learning environments.…

It is often observed that the globalization of social media has opened up new opportunities for informal intercultural communication and foreign language learning. This study aims to go beyond this general observation through a case study that explores how discourse analysis tools might be used to uncover evidence of language and intercultural…

The 12 Favorite Assignments featured in this article were presented at the 2011 Annual Convention of the Association for Business Communication (ABC), Montreal, Canada. A variety of learning objectives are featured: delivering bad news, handling difficult people, persuasion, reporting financial analysis, electronic media, face-to-face…

Joint construction of new knowledge demands that persons can express their statements in a convincing way and explore other people's arguments constructively. For this reason, more knowledge on different means to support collaborative argumentation is needed. This study clarifies whether structured interaction supports students' critical and…

Non-participation and poor quality participation in online environments is often discussed in the literature. Interaction and engagement in online discussions are critical for understanding and constructing new knowledge. In this case study, we examined messages posted by graduate students in four online debates for quantity and quality. The…

Rancorous dialogue among political opponents is nothing new in the American political system. However, in the past two decades or so, pundits and scholars have noted an increase in the overall intensity and frequency of incivility among elected officials and citizens. At the collegiate level, many universities have undertaken some form of civility…

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate whether powerful language training affected student participation, impression formation, and gender communication style in online discussions. Powerful language was defined as a lack of the use of powerless language. Participants in this study were 507 freshmen taking a first-year college…

Improving university students' writing skills is always a challenge. In a third-year French composition course, the researchers introduced the use of public Internet discussion forums to see if that would help achieve the argumentative writing skills goals that were set for this study. The results show that participation in the forums had a…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to explore the impact of asynchronous discussion on the quality and complexity of college students' arguments. Three different cohorts of students registered in a physical science course in 2009 Fall, 2010 Spring, and 2010 Fall semesters were briefly supported with scaffolding in class and then…

Social networking sites may include argumentative writing about particular issues in which participants adopt competing perspective and discourses on those issues. This study examined roles and discourses adopted by high school students participating in an online role-play conducted on a Ning platform regarding their school's Internet policies on…

Collaboration scripts can facilitate argumentation in online settings by grouping students with other students who have expressed differing perspectives on a discussion topic. This general scripting approach is referred to as a "conflict schema." Prior studies suggest that a specific conflict schema script known as "personally-seeded" discussion…