Alexander, IMHO, i prefer discourse analysis for my own work on blogs/comments (i actually use a variant of Critical Discourse Analysis). I argue thusly because, like others have mentioned, you need to contextualize the discourses you examine - not only in terms of medium and medium-induced conventions - but also WRT culture, gender, nationality, sexuality, and race (there's more, but you already know that). While content analysis can, in fact, be contexualized to include sociopolitical influences on discourse, discourse analysis (to me) seems to be a much more robust interpretive technique for understanding what discoursants bring to bear as they discuss things near and dear to their heart. just my two cents... André Message: 2

Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 04:23:57 +0400 From: Semenov Alexander <semenoffalex@googlemail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Text analysis of blog posts and comment threads: discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis

Hello everybody, I'm interested in qualitative text analysis of posts and comment treads in LiveJournal. I've found previous request on this topic in the aoir archieves, but it was 2 years ago (

http://listserv.aoir.org/htdig.cgi/air-l-aoir.org/2008-September/017172.html ).

But I still have some questions:

1) Which method would you prefer for such kind of analysis: discourse analysis or conversational analysis? 2) Are there any other artcles about qualitative text analysis of blog posts and comment threads?

Thanks in advance.

-- Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html

Graduate Student in Sociology at State University - Higher School of Economics http://www.hse.ru/eng

-- Andre Brock Assistant Professor - Library and Information Science/POROI University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242