Stancetaking in Online Interactions. A Case Study of Chronic Pain Discussions

Abstract

When people interact online, they usually present their thoughts within the context of a certain community. Naturally, just as in live face-to-face conversations, stances must be taken. The complex mechanism of stancetaking discloses how individuals evaluate their own utterances, the entities in their talk, (potential) audience and interlocutors in the online environment (following the Stance Triangle of Du Bois, 2007). This master thesis offers an innovative combination of (online) discourse analysis, medical communication and conversation analysis, since it focuses on a specific target group of chronic pain patients. The study applies the analytical toolbox by Kiesling et al. (2018) to annotate stance in the selected comments on Reddit, “the front page of the internet”. It demonstrates the universal nature of stance defined by two unifying factors: (1) online background (public social platform) and (2) topic (chronic pain). Stancetaking helps to see how chronic pain patients anonymously relate to each other, showing extremely high levels of investment and alignment. The quantitative and qualitative data analysis reveals how commenters shape and negotiate their identities online. The stances of “suffering” and “invisibility” were found to be the most common choices in patients’ comments, representing the core of their common experiences. Online communities offer a safe space in which the invisible identities of chronic pain patients become visible and acknowledged.