Bou-Franch, Patricia & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2014). Conflict management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube. Journal of Pragmatics 73, 19-36.

Postprint of paper published in: Journal of Pragmatics 73 (2014) 19--36

Conflict management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube Patricia Bou - Universitat de Valencia Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich – University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Introduction A few years ago, a British broadsheet claimed that, “YouTube has become notorious for hosting to some of the most confrontational and ill-formed comment exchanges on the internet” (Moore, 2008)1. Therefore, since we are interested in conflict and how it is digitally mediated, YouTube presents itself as an ideal site for our study. More specifically, the aim of this paper is to examine how conflict begins, unfolds and ends in a massive, new media polylogue, such as the ones afforded by YouTube’s texting facility. Extant research has looked into how conflict begins, unfolds and/or ends (Bousfield, 2007, 2008; Culpeper et al., 2003; Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Grimshaw, 1990; Jay, 1992; Vuchinich, 1990) and has developed models and taxonomies to account for these three key stages. However, to our knowledge, these models and taxonomies have not been applied to the analysis of the mediated conflict of massive polylogues. Internet theoreticians (Rogers, 2009) establish a difference between methods of analysis that are natively digital versus those that have been digitized, i.e. they were developed for off-line research and then migrated on-line. This is certainly the case with most extant linguistics and communication models, including those devised for the study of conflict. One of the goals of the paper is to test whether non-natively digital, extant models and taxonomies are well equipped to handle massive mediated polylogues. As dictated by the complex nature of polylogues (Marcoccia, 2004), a multilayered methodology was devised and applied to the analysis of a sizeable corpus of comments triggered by a public service announcement on teen homosexuality posted by a Spanish LGBT association. Often, discussions of homosexuality trigger “moral panics” (Baker, 2001, 2005). Therefore, we assumed that such a morally charged topic would generate instances of conflict. Based on the findings of the analysis, we will argue that extant models and taxonomies of conflict developed to account mostly for local, synchronic, dyadic conflict - are not well equipped to explain societal, diachronic, massively polylogal conflict such as the one under analysis and that hybrid models that can tackle the affordances of digital technologies need to be developed. The paper is structured as follows. We first review the extensive literature on conflict, with special reference to scholarly work on on-line conflict, the focus of our study. Against this theoretical framework, we formulate the research questions that guide our study and proceed to explain the methodology (data, theoretical framework and procedure) applied to the analysis of the corpus.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2668997/YouTubes-worst-comments-blocked-byfilter.html 1

Results are then presented and discussed, with attention to quantitative and qualitative aspects of the analysis. The last section contains our concluding remarks and suggestions for further research.

Background While hailed for fostering participatory cultural production and democracy (Burgess and Green, 2009) and reviled for the many controversies that emerge on the site (Moore, 2008), YouTube is an extremely popular social website which has attracted increasing attention from the press and from scholars in the social sciences. This is hardly surprising if one considers its vast social influence and the challenge it represents for scholars interested in language and mediated communication for, as Walther and Jang (2012: 2) argue, YouTube is a participatory website of the newest generation, where “complex communication phenomena” take place. Such complex communication phenomena are related to the sharing of video-clips as well as to the textual participation facilitated by YouTube. Generally, users who have previously had no contact with each other, and who often have different worldviews, engage in audiovisual and textual interaction to discuss all sorts of current topics. Thus, much research on YouTube has focused on the role it plays in such diverse areas as politics (Burgess and Green 2009; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010, 2012; Garcés Conejos et. al 2013), education (Snelson, 2008), health (Agazio and Buckley, 2009) or entertainment (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013). These and other scholars have noted that interaction regarding any of these topics often becomes hostile and polarized. Online conflict has been traditionally referred to as flaming (Herring, 1994; Danet, 2013), a term which has been questioned by scholars for setting online and offline conflict apart, thereby obscuring their similarities and inter-relatedness (Lange, 2006; O’Sullivan and Flanagin, 2003). In this paper, we use the general term conflict in an attempt, on the one hand, to make the interplay between online and offline communication more salient and, on the other, to bring together two different traditions of research on conflictual phenomena: computer-mediated communication and discourse analysis. We view conflict as an interpreting – or understanding, in Kádár and Haugh’s (2013) term - as not all interactants will necessarily deem the same situation as conflictive. Thus, we see conflict as emergent and co-constructed in interaction, and closely tied to the norms of a given social practice and to the diachronic unfolding of specific relationships among individuals who hold divergent worldviews on a particular issue (Brenneis, 1996; Grimshaw, 1990; Hutchby, 2001; Stewart and Maxwell, 2010). While the ubiquity of conflict on YouTube is well attested, little is known of the reasons and motivations behind it. Moor et al. (2010) carried out a questionnaire-based study which revealed that most YouTube users perceived conflict as an annoying side effect of freedom of speech. Users also reported that reduced awareness of others’ feelings and the safety of hurting others on YouTube, which lacks the repercussions usually attached to aggressive behavior, were important reasons for their use of conflictual talk. Another reason was their reported tendency to respond aggressively to perceived offences, which is an interesting finding for our study of how conflict unfolds in discourse. Moor et al.’s (2010) findings partly confirm Lange’s (2007) ethnographic study which also found that some users view conflict as positive, amusing action (see also GarcésConejos Blitvich, 2009 and Paglia, 2010, on the constitutive outcomes of conflict). Additionally,

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Lange (2007) underlines the need to distinguish between forms of hostility as these have different outcomes for users who, additionally, have different degrees of tolerance towards conflict. Computer-mediated communication research has emphasized the role of the medium’s technological affordances, and in particular the role of anonymity, in their explanations of conflict. Early studies of online conflict noted that antagonism and hostility were more frequent in online than in face-to-face communication. The pervasiveness of online conflict across computer modes was explained from ‘cues-filtered-out’ perspectives (Culnam and Markus, 1987), i.e. in terms of the comparatively reduced availability of social cues. That is, the limited contextual information afforded by the technology was considered to be behind the increase in uninhibited behavior and conflict (Short et al., 1976; Spears and Lea, 1992; Sproull and Kiesler, 1986). Several authors, however, have argued that reduced contextual information alone does not explain conflict in online interactions (Hobman et al., 2002; Lange, 2006, 2007). Walther (1992), for instance, suggests that conflict in online group communication is further related to time constraints, whereas Hobman et al. (2002) relate conflict to group development phases. Specifically for YouTube, Lange (2007) argues that despite its audiovisual interaction, which affords more information cues than text-only interactions, conflict persists and therefore cannot be seen as inherent to, or exclusively resulting from, anonymous communication (cf. Tannen, 1999). A particularly useful theory for understanding conflict on YouTube is the social identification/deindividuation (SIDE) model of computer-mediated communication (Lea and Spears, 1992; Reicher, Spears and Postmes, 1995). SIDE argues that as a result of anonymity, users experience a form of depersonalization and tend to self-identify abstractly with a group, thus relating to others on an intergroup rather than an interpersonal basis. SIDE predicts, therefore, the saliency of group membership and group norms. Anonymity and deindividuation, as understood by SIDE, lead to polarization in group dynamics, a fact which lies at the heart of online conflict. Lack of individuating information promotes group cohesiveness which leads users in group discussions to endorse the views of their in-group, and reject those of the out-group, in a more extreme manner (Lee, 2006, 2007). Thus, although users are exposed to different arguments, the distance between social groups with different worldviews increases and opinions become polarized. Anonymity and polarization are of special interest to our study of how conflict begins, unfolds and ends, as the uniqueness of YouTube interaction lies largely in its technological affordances (Herring, 2007). Digital discourse researchers describe new media participation not just as deindividuated but also as polylogal and convergent (Androutsopoulos, 2011, 2011; Bolander 2012; Bou-Franch, 2013; Bou-Franch et al., 2012; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010; Herring, 2007; Langlotz & Locher 2012; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011; Thurlow and Mroczek, 2011). These features make salient discourse processes of polarization, multiauthorship and multimodality. In particular, discourse-analytic studies of YouTube argue that in addition to features like anonymity and asynchronicity (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010), YouTube interaction is characterized by its polylogal nature and its double articulation (Bou-Franch et al., 2012; GarcésConejos Blitvich, 2010; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011). YouTube interactions constitute online polylogues or multi-participant interactions where users can participate on two levels - hence the double articulation- namely, users may contribute actively to the textual polylogues that ensue, or passively, without posting audiovisual /textual responses. Active participants include the owner of the channel and registered users, while passive participants are (non)registered users who watch the 3

video-clip and/or read the comments. Different participants in the polylogue have access to different additional communicative actions (Walther and Jang, 2012); while registered users may mark textual comments as spam or express their (dis)like by clicking on the thumbs-up/down icons, only owners of a specific site may further delete textual comments or block other users. The YouTube polylogue emerges as a special type of doubly-articulated, massive polylogue (BouFranch et al, 2012), which generates a persistent (Herring, 2007) textual record and is open to public participation for as long as the triggering video-clip remains posted on the site. These technological features allow users to join and drop out of the interaction at will over long periods of time, sometimes years. Fluctuating participant structures and interactions over extended periods of time, thus, also define YouTube communication. This allows unprecedented access to researchers to the diachronic unfolding of conflict, to which we will return below. Interestingly, discourse analysts of YouTube have noted that interaction unfolds both alongside the orderly turn-by-turn sequences typical of dyadic interactions as well as in networked sequences which combine adjacent and non-adjacent turns typical of asynchronous communication (BouFranch et al., 2012; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011). We contend that studies of conflict on YouTube must necessarily take into account the specific defining medium features discussed so far. However, there is only a small body of research on YouTube mediated communication from a discourse-analytic perspective and although these have mainly focused on conflict from frameworks drawing from impoliteness (Dynel, 2012; GarcésConejos Blitvich, 2010, 2012, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011), identity construction (GarcésConejos et al., 2013a, 2013b) and metaphor (Pihlaja, 2011), to our knowledge, no study thus far has focused on the beginning, unfolding and ending of conflict in the massive polylogues generated by YouTube’s texting facility. This is in contrast to the interest that these stages of conflict have generated among researchers of off-line conflict (see, among others, Bousfield, 2007; Brenneis, 1996; Corsaro and Rizzo, 1990; Culpeper et al,. 2003; Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Grimshaw, 1990; Hutchby, 2001; Leung, 2002; Lorenzo-Dus, 2009; Stewart and Maxwell, 2010; Vuchinich, 1990). This paper, thus, seeks to contribute to fill in this gap in the literature. The different models of conflict management proposed so far serve as basis for the analysis of the YouTube polylogue here under scrutiny. Due to space constraints, these models will be addressed in detail in the methodology section below. However, two related issues are of special importance to our general view of conflict and thus need to be addressed here: moral conflicts and their discursive boundaries. Moral conflicts arise among individuals that hold divergent ideological positionings; they are generally related to notions of (in)justice and represent entrenched positions that pervade the social reality of individuals. Moral conflicts may become intractable topics, i.e. conflicts that are characterized by a polarized rhetoric and thus need special conflict management. These have been referred to in the literature as “moral panics” (see Thompson, 1998; Baker, 2001). Baker (2001: 2) following Thompson, defines moral panics as … the efforts of a particular group to exert collective moral control over another group or person. They are characterized by the identification of a ‘problem’ perceived as a threat to a community or a subset of a community’s values or interest (sometimes reflecting political or religious beliefs…There is a rapid build-up of public concern focused on the supposed problem, and often numerous solutions are proposed, until the panic recedes or results in social change (Thompson, 1998:98). 4

The conflict in our data, which hinges on homosexuality, constitutes one type of moral panic. As such, it persists over time. This notion ties in with the second issue mentioned above, namely the discursive boundaries of conflict, for the origin and management of moral panics go beyond particular discursive interactions. Indeed, they cut across different social practices – mediated and/or non-mediated -, often having persisted throughout history (Burgess and Burgess 2003; Coleman, 2000; Stewart and Maxwell, 2010). Indeed, Roger (2009) along with other researchers who sponsor the “methodological turn” in internet research (Androutsopoulos and Beiβwenger 2009; Giles et al., unpublished; Herring, 2004) have tried to debunk the myth of the internet as a virtual realm apart, and strongly encourage research that no longer concerns itself with the divide between the real and the virtual. In fact, seeing the virtual as part of the real, the internet can be fruitfully used to diagnose cultural change and societal conditions. Incidentally, the similarity and continuity between on-line and off-line conflict should not be obscured as on-line conflict can also stem from “widespread forms of prejudice” (Lange, 2007). A model of conflict, as we will argue below, must be able to account for these features. It is against the theoretical background presented above that our study of the unfolding of conflict in an asynchronous, massive, online polylogue seeks to answer the two research questions below: RQ1. Would extant models of conflict, if digitized, be well-equipped to account for conflict in massive on-line polylogues such as those afforded by YouTube’s texting facility? RQ2. How does conflict begin/unfold/end in massive on-line polylogues such as those afforded by YouTube’s texting facility? In order to answer these two research questions, we developed a complex methodology which is explained in the next section.

Methododology Data The corpus for this study consists of 444 continuous postings, circa 23,700 words, in Spanish triggered in response to the video-PSA titled “Juventud y Homosexualidad 1/3” (“Youth and Homosexuality 1/3”)2. The comments span a period of three years since the video was posted on February 20, 2009 by COGAM’s Education Committee on their YouTube channel until February 12, 2013 when the data were collected for analysis. COGAM is an LGBT organization from Madrid, Spain, whose main goal is to endorse and distribute different types of materials - written, audiovisual, etc. - focusing on affective and sexual diversity. The video clip presents a group of young members of the LGBT community who discuss their sexual preferences. The group talks about how they realized they were different from others, how they learnt to accept themselves, and how they live productive lives. By getting to know their stories, the audience has an opportunity to bond with them and understand the many added difficulties LGBT teenagers experience due to rampant homophobia. Interspersed through the conversation, information is presented on screen regarding how the different members of the 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G72mSM5FzE 5

LGBT collective define themselves. Also, famous historical and contemporary LGBT individuals, information on the legal situation of LGBT groups in Spain and other countries, and the need for safe sexual practices are displayed. The data are part of the larger GenText corpus from the University of Valencia, of cc. 42 million words. The GenText corpus is not publicly available and was compiled for the study of gender inequality in Spanish and British societies. It comprises media texts ranging from articles from digital newspapers, and newspaper comments, to blog posts, and comments from forums, and YouTube. These texts deal with gender violence, homosexuality, and abortion. In particular, the data subset from YouTube, on homosexuality in Spain, which is the object of our study, was selected because of our own interest in gender and language and the polarization that sexual diversity often engenders, which in turn usually triggers conflict, the focus of the analysis. Data collection involved YouTube searches with the key term “Homosexuality,” in order to identify thematically relevant videos. For each video-clip in the GenText data, the YouTube options “All comments” and “Newest first” were then chosen; these options afford visualizing all the comments a video-clip has received, beginning with the last one on top. For this reason, comments were numbered in reversed order, i.e. beginning with the last one and then moving ‘upwards’. This, however, does not mean that all comments are displayed in the order in which they were received, as users may choose, in sending messages, between two possibilities: ‘post a new comment’–with the resulting message being displayed on top of the list of comments as a new message –or ‘respond to a comment.’ In the latter case, the reply is displayed below the comment it is responding to and slightly indented to the right. Further, comments may be misplaced (Herring, 1999; Marcoccia, 2004), in that a user may respond to another comment through ‘post a new comment’, and this response would not be placed below the comment it targets but above it. It therefore becomes essential to focus on message content and addressivity in order to understand how messages are connected to each other (Bou-Franch et al. 2012). Additionally, posting new messages at the top and posting replies in a different order makes the reading of the textual record of the polylogue a complex task, since one needs to scroll up and down while reading the messages. This also complicates the numbering of comments for analytic and explanatory purposes; however, as argued in Bou-Franch et al. (2012), this does not seem to pose a problem for YouTubers who may have developed different digital competences to participate in online debates (cf. Jones & Schieffelin, 2009). Analytical framework In order to answer our research questions, we designed a multilayered framework drawing from conflict and impoliteness scholarship and computer-mediated communication research. As most methods of analysis heretofore have been devised for dyadic interaction, and extended to multiparty interaction, analysts are trying to come to grips with the complexity of analyzing polylogues. Discourse analysts, indeed, were completely unprepared for having to cope with the massive polylogues (Bou-Franch et al., 2012) created by the affordances of computer mediated discourse. Polylogues, in fact, are known for posing ‘‘a challenge to all methods of formal analysis’’ (Marcoccia, 2004: 144) that can only be handled by ‘‘successive accessing approaches, from various perspectives and on different levels’’ (Traverso, 2004: 53–54). Beginnings

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Scholarship looking at the unfolding of conflict (Bousfield, 2007, 2008, 2013; Lorenzo-Dus, 2009; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011) has applied Jay’s (1992: 98, 2000) notion of “the offending event”, the first stage in his five stage model of anger, to the analysis of the circumstances under which conflict is initiated. For our analysis of conflict management in mediated polylogues, however, we deemed Hutchby’s (2001) approach to “being argumentative” more appropriate. In Jay’s model, the emphasis is placed on the offending event, although he acknowledges that “[w]hat promotes anger can vary from person to person and from time to time” (Jay 1992: 98). Hutchby (2001: 126) agrees that “any action is in principle open to being treated as an arguable”. If so, it is not the action per se, but the opposition, i.e. the second move, which becomes instrumental in initiating an argument sequence. Therefore, argumentativeness does not present any inherent characteristics but is triggered by the opposition it receives, and should be seen as emergent in sequential interaction. This is consistent with our view of conflict as an interpreting process. Middles The unfolding of conflict has recently been analyzed from the perspective of extant models of responses to impoliteness (Culpeper et al., 2003, Bousfield, 2007, 2008), which describe the ways in which a face-threat addressee may respond (or not) to an impolite act. If the addressee chooses to respond, s/he can accept or deny the impoliteness act. In denying the act, s/he can either come to a compromise in hopes to end the conflict or counter defensively or offensively with reciprocated impoliteness. However, as pointed out by Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2013), these models were devised mostly for face to face, dyadic interaction. Moreover, in the context of (mediated) polylogues, solely focusing on the face-threat recipient’s response does not seem sufficient to grasp the dynamics of im/politeness. In their study of the unfolding of impoliteness in the course of small group discussions, Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2013) note that extant models do not adequately account for the responding options afforded by polylogal communication and propose a revision that takes into consideration responses to impoliteness by face-threat witnesses, in addition to responses by face-threat recipients. In their data, it was often the face-threat witness that responded to the impoliteness act in complex and dynamic ways that are integral to the co-construction of impoliteness. However, this fundamental contribution would have been missed entirely if the focus of the analysis had been purely dyadic. Further, dyadic models suggest that conflict evolves in a linear fashion in interaction and give interpersonal, as opposed to intergroup, conflict center stage in the literature. However, conflict is often far from linear; it is likely to take unpredictable paths and change in focus and level of intensity as the interaction proceeds (Grimshaw 1990, Coleman 2000). For our purposes, Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2013) reformulation of Bousfield’s (2007, 2008) model of responses to impoliteness was applied to the analysis of the data (see Figure 1). Furthermore, as to use a shared language to discuss our assessments of conflict, a slightly modified version of Culpeper’s (2005, 2011) taxonomy of impoliteness strategies was used in the analysis of the corpus (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010;Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2011) (see appendix, below).

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Figure 1: Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2013) revision of Bousfield’s (2007) model for Participant Response Options

Ends The analysis of the “terminal exchange” in the polylogue under analysis was based on Vuchinich’s (1990) typology of basic termination formats for resolved/unresolved conflict (cf. Bousfield 2007). According to Vuchinich (1990: 118), “verbal conflict ends when the oppositional turns cease and other activities are taken”. It must be noted, however, that conflict, in many instances, is not discursively resolved (Brenneis, 1996; Corsaro and Rizzo, 1990; Grimshaw, 1990; Leung, 2002; Stewart and Maxwell, 2010), a point we return to later in our discussion. Going back to Vuchinich (1990), he explicitly acknowledges that his focus is on twoperson conflict and, in some instances, on the intervention of a third party. Vuchinich’s data were drawn from family interaction; therefore, his results reflect face to face interaction among intimates, among whom there is a hierarchal power distribution due to family role, age, and/or gender. The application of Vuchinich’s (1990) model to other genre practices may reveal different patterns of conflict (non)resolution. Table 1. Basic conflict in termination formats (Vuchinich, 1990: 134)

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Submission

A: Oppositional turn B: Oppositional turn A: Assent

Dominant thirdparty intervention A: Oppositional Turn B: Oppositional Turn C: Oppositional Turn A: Assent B: Assent

Compromise

Standoff

Withdrawal

A: Oppositional turn B: Oppositional turn A: Concession offering B: Concession acceptance

A: Oppositional turn B: Oppositional turn C: Topic shift

A: Oppositional turn B: Oppositional turn A: Withdraws

Procedure Our data analysis combined quantitative and qualitative methods and involved several steps. First, number of participants and number of contributions per participant were computed. We next classified digital comments, into three main categories, according to the ideological positions they indexed, namely as (i) supportive of homosexuality; (ii) opposed to homosexuality; and (iii) undetermined, for all comments that could not be clearly classified into the first two categories. The undetermined category does not entail a third, neutral, category, but just comments that we were not able to classify due to lack of the necessary content. The positions were very polarized, either for or against. We then analyzed arguable actions following Hutchby (2001), i.e. we labeled an interaction as conflictual when the second turn or response was adversarial. The previous classification of comments alongside ideological positions helped to identify oppositional turns, and therefore, conflict. Our approach was, therefore, bottom-up. Next, we focused on middles applying Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2013) refinement of Bousfield’s (2007, 2008) responses to impoliteness model. And, finally, we identified and computed the types of closing formats (Vuchinich, 1990) in the data. Coding according to the multilayered, analytic framework described above was independently and jointly undertaken by the two authors of this paper. Intercoder differences were subsequently resolved through discussion. Once coded, the data were quantitatively analyzed. The results revealed a number of patterns, which were further explored qualitatively.

Results and discussion Regarding participation, there were 210 participants in the polylogue under analysis whose comments were still posted at the time of data collection. 11 participants’ comments had been deleted. Often, however, the overall content of these deleted messages could be gleaned from the responses of other participants to their messages. Table 2. Number of participants and comments Number of senders 144 (69%)

Number of comments 1 9

27 (13%) 9 (4%) 11 (5%) 7 (3%) 2 (1%) 2 (1%) 1 (0.5%) 2 (1%) 1 (0.5%) 1 (0.5%) 1 (0.5%) 1 (0.5%) 1 (0.5%) Total: 210

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 18 26 Total: 433 (+11 deleted)

A clear pattern emerges from the data in table 2. The largest sample of participants (69%) posted just one comment. The average of postings per participant was 2.1 comments. Just five participants contributed 77 of the 444 turns (17.3%). Table 3. Ideological positioning of comments regarding homosexuality Supportive Opposed Undetermined

238 – 53.6% 138- 31.1% 68-15.3%

Over 53% of the comments posted supported homosexuality, whereas 31% were against it, and in 15.5% of the cases the content of the messages was not explicit enough for them to be included in one of the other two categories. Table 4. Closings – The terminal exchange Submission – Assent Dominant 3rd party intervention Compromise Stand-off Withdrawal

9 – 3.7% 11 – 4.5% 0 4 – 1.6% 218 – 90%

As shown in table 4, the withdrawal was by far the most frequent closing format. This was followed by dominant third party intervention (4.5%) and submission-assent (3.7%). However, of the 9 occurrences of assents, 8 were ironic and re-classified as pseudo-assent. Significantly, there was not a single case of compromise.

Discussion Our first research question focused on how conflict emerges, unfolds, and is (un)resolved on a YouTube polylogue. The results regarding participation in the polylogue under scrutiny provide a partial answer to this question. The emerging pattern with most participants (69%) contributing 10

a single comment and an average of 2.1 comments per user, fits in well with the kind of polarized argumentation that has been found to be typical of the deindividuated polylogues of YouTube and other new media discourses (cf. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2010; Bou-Franch, 2013). Participants seldom engage in discussion open to the possibility of changing their minds about the issue at hand, and are thus not necessarily interested in elaborating on their position on the topic and willing to read and take into consideration other participants’ views to perhaps reach a compromise. Here, participants post a comment with their views (pro or against), sometimes in response to the video clip, sometimes in response to other participants’ comments (sometimes to both, due to the multifunctionality of discourse) and then withdraw from the interaction. Participation in this polylogue is, therefore, massive and in a constant state of flux (cf. Bou-Franch et al. 2012). These are taken to be important elements in understanding conflict on YouTube. Beginnings Specifically, our analysis of conflict beginnings on YouTube revealed that the emergent quality of argumentativeness referred to by Hutchby (2001) was even more evident in polylogal than in dyadic interactions. In our data, we found two types of first actions (Hutchby, 2001), namely, the video clip and users’ comments, pro or against homosexuality, which triggered both oppositional and non-oppositional responses3. The following are examples of non-oppositional responses to the video-clip, in which YouTube users congratulate video-producers as well as the people who are featured in it (comments 1 and 271, respectively; these comments were indeed very supportive. Example 1. 1.galanguadalajara hace 3 años / 3 years ago Muy bueno el video, felicidades Great video clip. Congratulations 271. MrHernandez778 hace 2 años / 2 years ago estos gay son muy valientes por decir so verdadero identidad These gay folks show a lot of courage for being so open about their true identity However, the same video-clip also triggered oppositional comments from other users (example 2). In particular, ‘tuquehablas’, in comment 61, finds one of the gay men portrayed in the video especially annoying, while the user of comment 229 expresses disdain for all gays and lesbians. Example 2. 61. tuquehablas hace 3 años / 3 years ago menudo subnormal el del 1:55.. cosas raras dice

Although in previous work we used the term ‘turn’ to refer to participants’ comments after signalling the differences between the latter and conversational turns (Bou-Franch et al. 2012; Lorenzo-Dus et al. 2011), we have decided to use the term ‘comment’ in this study. This is consistent with our view of the digitizing process that discursive models must undergo to have explanatory value when applied to communication over the internet. 3

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the guy who talks at 1:55 m is just retarded. He’s talking about weird stuff. 229. vatohiphopero1998 hace 2 años /23 years ago ke se vallan a la chingada los gays y las lesbianas all gays and lesbians can go to hell These varying responses to the same initial action, the video clip, are important in that they lead to a necessary problematization of conflict beginnings. Far from being easily identifiable categories of offending events, performed by a specific offender, and characterized by a number of distinguishing features (or combination thereof) (Culpeper et al., 2003; Bousfield, 2007; Jay, 1992), our analysis provides empirical support to Hutchby’s (2001) view that any action is, in principle, ‘arguable’ and may as such be opposed. Therefore, we agree with Hutchby (2001), that it is the second turn, when oppositional, which triggers conflictual interaction. The contrasting responses to the video-clip, thus, underscore the nature of offences as interpretings, with great variability and disagreement among participants in the polylogue about whether the video-clip and comments were offensive (see also example 3, below). These findings fit in well with previous empirical, research on impoliteness assessments. Specifically, in their study of impoliteness using multimodal questionnaires and focus group interactions, Garcés-Conejos et al. (2010) revealed that participants in broadcast polylogues also showed variation and disagreement in their assessments of particular behaviors (see also Bou-Franch, 2013; Eelen, 2001; Haugh, 2010; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2012), and that such assessments were crucially related to ideology and identity construction processes. In the case of the YouTube polylogue under scrutiny, (non)oppositional turns are also related to the ideological positioning of users. As our results show, only slightly over 50% of all comments clearly supported sexual diversity. Of the remaining comments, most were against homosexuality (over 30%) while half as many were undetermined. Middles Regarding the unfolding nature of conflict, we applied Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2013) model of responses to impoliteness to the analysis of the data so as to incorporate responses by third parties. Four important issues came up as a result of the analysis, namely, (i) the need to take into consideration both synchronic / diachronic perspectives to interaction; (ii) the blurring of the categories recipient and witness as conflict respondents; (iii) the need to further problematize the offensive / defensive quality of responses and, finally, (iv) the nonlinear, networked pattern of conflict ‘middles’. Furthermore, the analysis manifested the inherent difficulty of empirically teasing out conflict that ensues as a result of face threat from conflict that arises as the result of identity nonverification (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Joseph, 2013). Due to the saliency of social identity in this deindividuated environment, most conflict arose as participants (dis)affiliated themselves from/with one of two social identities: supporters and detractors of homosexuality. Furthermore, as a part of the process of disaffiliation, there was an explicit threat to the authenticity/selfworth/self-efficacy attributes, i.e. face, associated with each of the two social identities listed above. Since these two processes were so integral to each other, we decided to merge them into one, namely face/identity threat, and viewed this merged threat as an antecedent to conflict.

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Also, during the analysis, it soon became apparent that YouTube data require models that can combine synchronic and diachronic approaches to conflict. Most conflict data analyzed in the extant literature deal with synchronic, in the sense of local or punctual, examples of conflict. The conflict emergent in our data, for its part, spans three years and is still on-going, mostly unresolved, as new users watch and respond to the YouTube video and comments, contributing to a massive, on-going polylogue. Indeed, the nature of our data allows us to approach them diachronically, as YouTube’s texting facility provides a written, and thus persistent (Herring, 2007), record of the interaction which is rendered more stable and accessible to new users. Additionally, conflict also emerges at a local level, as some comments elicit responses which form side sequences (cf. Jefferson, 1972), conflict within conflict, which must be approached from a synchronic perspective. Example 3 illustrates these two levels of conflict interaction, i.e. diachronic and synchronic. Example 3 93 macabrojavier hace 3 años / 3 years ago si somos enfermos los homosexuales.y vivimos en un mundo de perversion.basta al radicalismo cristiano que trata de oprimir la naturaleza humana. todos somos unos enfermos asquerosos y nos sentimos bien asi. yes, we homosexuals are sick, and we live in a world of perversion. stop christian radicalism which tries to subjugate human nature. we are all disgustingly sick and feel fine the way we are 92 ROXERVCREW hace 3 años / 3 years ago Este comentario se ha marcado como spam. ocultar • No spam This comment was marked as spam. hide • No spam SIMPLEMENTE SON PUTOS ENFERMOS :D YOU ARE SIMPLY FUCKING SICKOS :D 91 emmanuelcold hace 3 años / 3 years ago mexicana o mexicano de mierda y mira que te lo digo yo que soy mexicano, ignorante por eso en Europa tienen esa imagen de nosotros, de ignorantes e imbéciles. fucking Mexican male or female and look I’m telling you this even though I’m Mexican myself, you are just ignorant that’s why Europeans think we are ignorant and foolish en respuesta a / in reply to ROXERVCREW 90 ROXERVCREW hace 3 años haha creeme que lo que piense europa de mi pais me lo paso por los huevos, no me importa si vives ahi haha creeme que conosco eso y yo no soy uno de esos tipicos mexicanos "nacos" ni fresita asi que valiendome madres voy a europa o a otro puto lugar y no me ven asi, simplemente la nacionalidad no tiene nada que

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ver , sino, la forma de ser , yo puedo ser ingles y comportarme como imbesil pero en este pinche pais alaban a cualquier idiota extranjero haha believe me i could fucking care less about what Europe thinks of my country, I don’t care if you live there haha believe i know that situation well and I am not an uncultured Mexica, I am not preppy either and I go to Europe or anywhere else I fucking feel like and I am not perceived that way nationality simply has nothing to do with it, it is all about the way you are, I can be British and behave like an idiot but in this fucking country they just love any foreign idiot en respuesta a / in reply to emmanuelcold 89 Martin Bernasconi hace 3 años / 3 years ago y vos simplemente sos un pobre cobarde!!! and you are simply a coward!!! en respuesta a / in reply to ROXERVCREW 88 ROXERVCREW hace 3 años / 3 years ago cobarde ?? haha pendejo cobarde es no decir las cosas imbesil a coward?? Haha asshole being a coward is not calling a spade a spade you idiot en respuesta a / in reply to Martin Bernasconi 87 xpridex1990 hace 3 años / 3 years ago Oh siiiii! Y nos gusta infectar a las nuevas juventudes MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh yeaaaaah!!! We [gays] love infecting the young Muahahahahahahahahahhahaha

On a diachronic level, comment 92 above contains an oppositional response to the arguable action contained in the video, which contributes to the on-going-for-over-three-years conflict in the polylogue under scrutiny (cf. comments in example 2). Simultaneously, however, due to the multifunctionality and multi-sequentiality of discourse, at a local, synchronic level, this ‘second turn’ also works as a further arguable action, which elicits a number of responses in comments 91, 89, 87 and 93 (some of which, in turn, are also responded to). This is a local exchange which constitutes a YouTube-specific ‘side sequence’4 (cf. Jefferson, 1972) of further conflict. Moreover, the combination of synchronic and diachronic interactional perspectives was observed to blur the clear cut distinctions between ‘recipient’ and ‘witness’ used in the literature to explain responses to conflict in interaction. These categories are also problematized by the fact that “In the course of some on-going activity (for example, a game, a discussion), there are occurrences one might feel are not ‘part’ of that activity but which appear to be in some sense relevant. Such an occurrence constitutes a break in the activity – specifically, a ‘break’ in contrast to a ‘termination’; that is, the on-going activity will resume. This could be described as a ‘side sequence within an on-going sequence’ “. (Jefferson 1972: 294). 4

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deindividuated environments, such as the one under scrutiny, foster the saliency of social rather than individual identity (Lea and Spears, 1992; Reicher et al., 1995). Identity processes are at the heart of conflict, as many authors have noted (Bou-Franch et al. forthcoming; Grimshaw, 1990, Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2009, Georgakopoulou, 2013). Indeed, in our data, most participants construct themselves, and interact with each other, as supporters or detractors of homosexuality, in an ‘Us versus Them’ fashion, positioning themselves alongside two broad social identities enacted alongside different ideologies. Taking this and the fact that, from a diachronic perspective, all participants have access to the comments posted before and after theirs are fundamental facts in relation to what we would like to argue. Having access to the often extremely aggressive and insulting language with which both camps (supporters and detractors) refer to each other may turn witnesses of the on-going conflict (i.e. participants who were not engaged in this polylogal interaction say two years ago) into recipients, as they feel insulted as members of the camp under attack. Additionally, from a synchronic perspective, two main patterns of conflict emerged. On the one hand, we found sequences with a comment containing an attack directed at a social group – for example comment 92 above (YOU ARE SIMPLY FUCKING SICKOS :D). In this situation, by virtue of their social identity, respondents were considered to be recipients of the offence therein. On the other hand, some comments contain attacks against a specific participant. These attacks, however, are not personal in a strict sense: the participant is attacked for being a member of a social group, a situation which may also turn a witness into recipient of the attack, due to shared social identities. This is the case in the following exchange: Example 4 280 cubero3 hace 2 años / 2 years ago jejejeje puto no sabes nada cara de la verga un vergaso en la cara para k te calles a no cuidado se le kiebra una uña xuxa noc k xuxa acen gente como tu en este planeta si k valen pura verga xuxa ni uno x mi sona k sino full plomo y se acabo oiste pelamaso lo peor k español asco de gente en respuesta a / in reply to darkbaital Hehehehe asshole you know nothing dick face i’ll punch you in the face to shut up oh no, careful, maybe one of your nails will break i don’t know what people like you are doing on this planet ????? you are just boring it is over did you hear that you bore the worst of the worst a Spaniard they are awful people. 279 scm2244 hace 2 años / 2 years ago soy gay y si me lo dijeras en la cara te romperia la madre como el hombre que soy acomplejado! I’m gay and if you were to say that to my face I would break your neck as the man I am and you are just ashamed of who you are! In example 4, we observe a conflictual exchange during which cubero3 is currently directing a series of homophobic remarks against ‘darkbaital’ (comment 280), when another participant 15

‘scm2244’ also takes offence, as far as his/her social identity/face as a gay man has been threatened by those remarks (comment 279). Thus, ‘scm2244’ becomes not only a witness of this local, synchronic exchange, but also a recipient. In the participant framework of YouTube polylogues, all users are ratified participants (Bou-Franch et al 2012) and do indeed often respond to face/identity attacks not initially directed at them. A detailed analysis of the unfolding of conflict further led to the problematization of the responding options and, more specifically, of the distinction between defensive and offensive strategies (Bousfield 2007; Culpeper 2005). To illustrate this point, a detailed comment-bycomment, discursive analysis of a conflict exchange is in order. We do this by drawing on example 3 above, which contains a side-sequence made up of 7 comments, with 5 different users. The synchronic analysis of this conflict sequence begins at comment 92, when ‘ROXERVCREW’ responds to the arguable action in the video-clip, opposing the openness with which the young people therein share their coming-out stories, and describes them as being “sick/disgusting”, which he does by using swear words, no arguments and non-standard spelling typical of computer-mediated discourse, i.e. writing the entire message in capital letters. This latter strategy is commonly used for emphasis but is “often considered undesirable ‘shouting’” (Bieswanger, 2013: 273). The use of offensive strategies aggravated by capitalization probably explains why this comment not only receives multiple responses but is also marked as spam by other users. In particular, ‘emmanuelcold’, in comment 91 feels his identity threatened and therefore responds to the previous comment by denying the opposition. He is, therefore, recipient of comment 92, on a synchronic level, but also both recipient and witness of previous comments containing actions opposing homosexuality. In his response, this user attends to their shared nationality, and blames and insults the previous user for causing European citizens to think badly of Mexicans. This comment, therefore, counters the previous comment through use of taboo words, calling the other names, and associating the previous user with negative aspects, i.e. through offensive strategies. Conflict proceeds as ‘ROXERVCREW’ responds to what is perceived as an offense, in comment 90, showing that s/he feels recipient of the oppositional action in turn 91 (synchronic level). From a diachronic perspective, s/he continues to be both recipient and witness of previous comments supporting sexual diversity. Comment 90 denies the previous opposition both offensively and defensively. The comment is defensive as this user makes light of the offence (haha...) and puts forth an argument, offers an account, to the effect that nationality does not explain how people behave. The comment, however, is also offensive, as it contains several instances of taboo words (this fucking country). Further, ‘ROXERVCREW’ is unconcerned about the previous user (I don’t care if you live there), uses implicated impoliteness (I am not an uncultured Mexican I am not preppy either), and associates their country – and therefore their social identity as Mexicans - with a negative aspect. At this point, another participant intervenes in comment 89 not to respond to the immediately previous comment but to oppose the comment, 92, that triggers this side sequence acting as face/identity threat recipient of the action therein. From a diachronic perspective, this user, ‘Martin Bernasconi’, is also both recipient and witness of previous comments opposing homosexuality. Comment 89 denies the opposition in 92 offensively, by calling the first user names, e.g. ‘coward’, an insult which is boosted through the use of three exclamation marks. 16

The participant that triggered this sequence, ‘ROXERVCREW’, responds to this comment as synchronically/locally addressed recipient and as both recipient and witness of the threat posed by previous pro-homosexuality comments, on a diachronic level. Comment 88 denies the opposition in the previous comment by simultaneously resorting to offensive and defensive strategies. While being sarcastic and condescending (a coward?? Haha asshole), using taboo words (asshole) and calling the other names (and you are simply a coward!!!) have been classified in the literature (cf. Bousfield 2007.) as offensive strategies, the argument that not speaking one’s mind is what is cowardly would be an instance of the defensive strategy, provide/offer an account. At this point, a new user in the sequence, ‘xpridex1990’, responds again to comment 92, as s/he feels recipient of the action therein. Diachronically, this participant is also both recipient and witness of previous anti-homosexuality comments. Specifically, ‘xpridex1990’ uses defensive strategies by ironically agreeing with ‘ROXERVCREW’, e.g. Oh yeaaaaah!, where repeated use of the vowel marks the irony, and by making light of the former’s comments through onomatopoeic laughter which is emphasized through capitalization (e.g. MUAHAHAHAHA..). Simultaneously, comment 87 is also sarcastic in “we enjoying infecting the youth”.’ Xpridez’ is, therefore, also offensive. The last response to ‘ROXERVCREW’’s initial action, in comment 93, was not sent by clicking on the “reply to” button, like all others, but using the general “post a comment” option. This explains the position of this new comment, 93, indented to the left, at the same level as 92 and following it. In 93, ‘macabrojavier’ sees himself as a recipient of the threat posed by comment 93, as well as recipient/witness of previous comments against homosexuality. His response begins by drawing from defensive strategies like offer insincere agreement, e.g. ‘yes, we homosexuals are sick and live in a world of perversion’, and moves on to more offensive strategies like blocking the other, and associating a religious belief of the other group – fundamental Christianity – with a negative aspect (stop christian radicalism which tries to subjugate human nature). This, however, is both offensive, as it associates the user’s beliefs with a negative aspect, and defensive, as it provides an account. This comment ends with a sarcastic tone (we are all disgustingly sick and feel fine the way we are). As we mentioned above, our analysis revealed how close and indistinct offensive and defensive strategies often really are. Although they have been treated as different types of actions in the literature, often both kinds of strategies are combined in the same comment, and cannot be easily separated from each other, as many comments simultaneously defended a position while offending those who support the other (Bousfield, 2007); as a result, most comments were multifunctional, i.e. both offensive and defensive. Finally, the polylogal nature of the interaction, and the ease of access it affords explain the multiple responses that any (non) oppositional comment may receive. Unlike in dyadic studies, in which conflict was seen as evolving in a linear fashion, with an orderly turn alternation between participants, in our data, linearity was seldom the case, and conflict evolved in networked ways, with multiple responses from multiple participants. The following graph depicts the visual representation of the networked pattern of the side sequence in example 3 above.

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Video/

93. macabrojavier

Action

92. ROXERVCREW 91. emmanuelcold 90. ROXERVCREW 89. Martin Bernasconi 88. ROXERVCREW 87. xpridex1990

The analysis of conflict middles, therefore, showed an on-going conflict polylogue, interspersed with side sequences that stand in a conflict within conflict relationship with the former. To account for this form of conflict unfolding, diachronic and synchronic perspectives were invoked and the notions of recipient / witness, offensive / defensive strategies and linearity / networked patterns were questioned and reconsidered based upon the empirical evidence provided.

Ends The last part of our analysis involved looking at how and whether conflict ends and is resolved in our YouTube data. Not surprisingly, withdrawal was the most common type of terminal exchange in this polylogue (90%), which according to Vuchinich (1990) is the most socially disruptive form of termination “because it halts communication and prevents a smooth transition to a new speech activity” (1990, p. 135). Significantly, it was the least frequently used format in his data. The following illustrates this format. Example 5 83 ingenierocivilUNI hace 3 años / 3 years ago Este comentario ha recibido demasiados votos negativos. Mostrar This comment has received too many negative votes. Show Está comprobado que los homosexuales se hacen en las familias malformadas y con problemas muy graves. La psicología lo ha demostrado It has been proven that gays are a result of dysfunctional families with very serious problems. Psychology has proven it. 82 androgos hace 3 años / 3 years ago Para empezar desde que lo llamas "problema" el que tiene serios traumas eres tu, muy probablemente debido a una familia catolica , y pues CIENTIFICAMENTE 18

se ha demostrado que la psicologia no tiene nada que decir en un asunto que es totalmente GENETICO!!! en respuesta a / in reply to ingenierocivilUNI The fact that you refer to it as a “problem” shows that you are really the one who is very traumatized, probably due to your catholic upbringing and SCIENTIFICALLY it has been shown that psychology has nothing to say in a matter that is strictly GENETIC. 81 UtopicoGRA16 hace 3 años / 3 years ago error... la cuestion radica en que ser homosexual es una condicion . q se acepta o no.. desde q se nace algunos la tienen en respuesta a / in reply to ingenierocivilUNI Mistake – the fact is that being gay is a condition that, whether you accept it or not, one is born with. 80 alex moreno hace 3 años / 3 years ago ignorante Ignorant The conflict sequence in Example 7 begins with comment 83, which argues – in response to the arguable action in the video-clip and to previous comments - that homosexuality is the product of dysfunctional families as demonstrated by psychologists. This arguable action is, in turn, responded to by three different participants, who, in comments 82, 81 and 80, engage in a sidesequence to deny the opposition with the contribution of one single comment, and then withdraw. This frequent withdrawal format fits in well, as mentioned, with the polarized nature of the argumentation and with the participation pattern described above. Dominant third-party intervention was the second most frequent format of conflict termination. This format took a special form in the data. In YouTube polylogues, all participants have equal status, with no hierarchical relations except in the case of the channel owner who uploaded the video initially (Walther and Jang, 2012). Channel owners have the power to delete comments and block users from the site. In our data, we found 11 cases of deleted comments/authors, which we interpreted as YouTube specific forms of dominant third-party interventions. Next in frequency were submissions / assents. Indeed, we only found a real case of submission / assent in the whole corpus (Example 5). In the other 8 cases in which submission/assent occurs, it is conveyed with irony, i.e. a pseudo-assent which could be even more face-threatening than an outright oppositional turn. Example 5 219 MsVi1973 hace 2 años / 2 years ago gracias por tu explicacion. que estes bien....de acuerdo, el respeto es importante... thanks for the explanation. be well....I agree, respect is very important…

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In this example, ‘MsVi1973’ thanks another user for the account provided, expresses good wishes towards him/her and, finally, explicitly agrees with what the previous user argued through the use of I agree. ‘MsVi1973’ concludes by underscoring the importance of respecting others. This comment, however, was exceptional in its sincerity. In example 3 above, for instance, comment 93 illustrates the case of ironic assent. This comment begins with an agreement with comment 92, yes we homosexuals are all sick and live in a world of perversion. This ironic agreement is repeated at the end of the comment. However, this stretch is clearly multifunctional, as the assenting words we are disgustingly sick and we feel great this way further imply something along the line ‘so leave us alone!.’ Stand-off terminations were only realized in four cases (1.6%). In the absence of assent or compromise, stand-offs, according to Vuchinich (1990: 37) allow participants to save face and move to another activity. Again, the fact that face saving, stand-off terminations are so rare in the corpus fits in well with the polarized nature of the discussion between participants who hold irreconcilable ideological positions and for whom participating in the discussion appears to be a zero sum game. In example 6, ‘xpridex1990’ confirms her opposition to a previous (oppositional) comment I am not fixated on it, I am a lesbian and puts an end to the exchange there is nothing further to say on the matter. Stand-off terminations like the one below are typically followed by topic shifts. Example 6 66. xpridex1990 hace 3 años / 3 years ago No tengo ninguna fijación, simplemente soy lesbiana, no hay que discutir más sobre el tema. I am not fixated on it. Simply put, I am a lesbian, and there is nothing further to say on the matter.

Finally, we found no cases of compromise in the corpus. This further points to the polarized nature of the polylogue. What is obvious, however, is that regardless of the presence of different types of final exchange, the conflict displayed/instantiated/co-constructed/that unfolds in the polylogue under scrutiny does not really end, but is still on-going.

Concluding remarks The main goal of our analysis was to respond to the research questions that guided it:

RQ1: Would extant models of conflict, if digitized, be well-equipped to account for conflict in massive on-line polylogues such as those afforded by YouTube’s texting facility?

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RQ2: How does conflict begin/unfold/end in massive on-line polylogues such as those afforded by YouTube’s texting facility? In light of the analysis, the answer to RQ1 is that they would not. Digitized models appear not to be supported when they are applied to the analysis of new media polylogues. Therefore, we would like to argue that extant models used to examine conflict beginnings, middles, and ends, if solely digitized, are not well equipped to deal with conflict in online discourse, mostly since they do not take into account the specific technological features of new media interaction. The answer to RQ2 intersects with a more detailed response to RQ1, as it is as a consequence of the way that conflict “begins, unfolds and ends” in massive, on-line polylogues that extant models, even if digitized, cannot properly account for these processes. As far as beginnings are concerned, one of the problems we have found in applying extant, digitized models of responses to impoliteness to the analysis of polylogal data is that they were conceived to be applied to local, synchronic instances of conflict in which the localized “beginning” is supposed to be the trigger of the conflict at hand and the “end” to signal its ending or resolution. However, as mentioned above, we agree with Hutchby (2001) that it is not an action per se that causes conflict, but its reaction to it, as the varied responses to the video we found in the corpus demonstrated. Furthermore, in the case under scrutiny, the video clip that triggers the comments does not carry out a “new” action or cause a “new” reaction. Homosexuality has been around since the beginning of time and in the last, more permissive decades many coming-out stories - such as the ones narrated in the video - have reached the general public through different media. Despite changing attitudes, there still seems to be– as evidenced in the corpus – very polarized views on homosexuality that stem from religious views (mostly Christian, as participants argue that engaging in homosexual relationships defies the laws of God as described in the Bible or that, on the contrary, God is love and loves all his creations – including homosexuals - equally) or from psychophysiological, nature versus nurture views (homosexuality is a choice rather than a genetic condition and it is therefore a deviation), etc. Comments pro or against homosexuality by one participant trigger a rebuttal by another one. However, this is far from a new conflict, or one that can be circumscribed to the polylogue under analysis. It is indeed a societal conflict, a discursive struggle over different ideological positions. Our study, thus, responds to the call for research that no longer concerns itself with the divide between the real and the virtual (Roger, 2009). Regarding the unfolding of conflict, our results suggest that models of conflict management in digital environments like YouTube should look at its unfolding both from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective so as to strengthen/enhance their explanatory potential. Further, our empirical analysis led to the problematizing of the distinctions between face threat recipient and witness, and between offensive and defensive strategies. Our results did not support assumptions of linearity in the unfolding of conflict either. Finally, although some termination formats were more frequent than others in the polylogue under scrutiny, conflict was not resolved therein. Multiparticipation and the saliency of social identity led to new users joining in the interaction and advancing the conflict in as much the same way as previous users. This is because all participants, as argued above, enacted one of two possible social identities: supporters or detractors of homosexuality. Therefore, even if new users joined in, they did so as members of these two ideologically opposed social groups. In addition, the fact that this is an

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on-going conflict in society is well reflected in the polylogue examined, where conflict is also ongoing and unresolved. The analysis of “beginnings, middles and ends” in massive, on-line polylogues also leads us to strongly problematize these three stages. In view of the results, we see them as reified constructs that cannot fully account for the multifunctionality of utterances, the multi-sequentiality of conflict in polylogal, mediated interaction, and the undeniable, though seldom tested fact, that conflict is often not resolved, especially in environments characterized by the anonymity afforded by YouTube texting facility. Indeed, we see conflict on YouTube polylogues as undergoing a continuous middle, which fits in well with its moral panic quality, an unresolved discursive struggle over two conflicting ideologies. Drawing from the findings of our analysis, we would like to propose a revised version of Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2013) refinement of Bousfield’s (2007) model of response options to impoliteness that explains how conflict unfolds in massive, on-line polylogues.

Iff AAn (diachronic)

Iff AAn

Compromise

Iff AAn

Oppose Respondn

Iff AA

Defensively/offensively

Face /identity threat

Do not oppose (possible assent)

Iff AAn

(synchronic) recipient / witnessn Do not respondn

(possible withdrawal)

Iff AAn

Possible standoff Figure 2. Proposed revision for the unfolding conflict in massive on-line, polylogues or in YouTube polylogues? (where AA = arguable action)

Thus, if a particular (arguable) action, on a synchronic level, or any number of actions, on a diachronic level, is/are perceived as (a) face / identity threat(s) by any number of recipients / witnesses, these perceived threats may be responded or not responded to. If they are not responded to, this may be due to possible participant withdrawal. If they are responded to, however, each respondent has two further options. One of those option, do not oppose the action, may lead to possible assents. The other option, oppose the action, may be carried out defensively/offensively, or it may lead to compromise. All responding actions, i.e. the defensive/offensive actions, the compromise, the assents, and the withdrawals are arguable actions. If they are perceived as threats, possible standoffs may be reached, leading to a repetition of the whole process.

References

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Appendix Taxonomy of impoliteness strategies (Culpeper, 2005; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010; LorenzoDus et al., 2011). On record impoliteness (ON-IMP)

Off record impoliteness (ORIMP) Positive impoliteness (PIMP): ignore / snub the Implicated other (ISO); exclude other from activity (EOA), impoliteness (IP) dissociate from other (DFO); be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic (DUU); use inappropriate identity markers (IIM); use obscure secretive language (OSL); make the other feel uncomfortable (MOFU); seek disagreement (SD); use taboo words (TW); call the other names (CON) Negative impoliteness (NIMP): frighten (FR); Sarcasm (SRC) condescend, scorn, ridicule (CSR); invade the other’s space (IOS); explicitly associate other with a negative aspect (ANA); put the other indebtedness on record (PIR); hinder or block the other, either linguistically or physically (BO).

Withhold politeness

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