THEME: THE STRUCTURE OF INTERNET DISCOURSE ACROSS PLATFORMS AND GENRES
Keywords:
Internet Discourse, Digital Genre, Platform Affordances, Discourse Analysis, Social Media, Reddit, X (Twitter), Online Communities, Computer-Mediated CommunicationAbstract
The architecture of online communication is not monolithic but is fundamentally shaped by the interplay of platform affordances and discursive genres. This article investigates the structural patterns of internet discourse by analyzing how specific technological features—such as character limits, threading, permanence, and algorithmic curation—interact with user-defined genres (e.g., the political thread, the fan theory, the review) to produce distinct communicative norms and textual forms. The findings demonstrate that internet discourse is a layered construct where genre conventions adapt to, and are constrained by, the underlying platform architecture, resulting in platform-specific "discourse ecologies" with significant implications for public deliberation, community formation, and knowledge production.
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