'For she who knows who she is': Managing accountability in online forum messages

Abstract

The recent application of Conversation Analysis (CA) to online forum communication has been successful in explicating the sequential ties among messages. In this article, we build on those foundations and show how CA's illumination of the structural resources of interaction can provide an analysis of accountable action in an online forum setting. We report a case study to illustrate how a user, in carrying off a 'declaration of love,' attends to her accountability in posting such a message. We analyse the message's placement as an initiating first turn; its prefatory work as an announcement; its selection of next speaker; and its internal design as a turn-at-interaction. We show how these features are oriented to in the first message sent in response. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the usefulness of CA in illuminating users' orientation to the accountable norms of online behavior.