Kinship carers' complaints about birth parents' Facebook posts: Mediated evidentiality and identity construction. Wilkes, J. & Speer, S. A. Language & Communication, 83:97-108, 2022.
Kinship carers' complaints about birth parents' Facebook posts: Mediated evidentiality and identity construction [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Popular discourse contends that social media interactions are somehow less valid than face-to-face exchanges. Complaining about the impact of online activities can construct identity-linked cultural and moral norms. One such identity is that of ‘kinship carer’ - family members who step in to parent a relative's child when the birth parent is unable. From a corpus of video recordings of 10 support group discussions, we identified two ways that participants constructed family identities in topicalising Facebook use: by a) negotiating social media norms for this sensitive family context, and b) supporting their epistemic status with reference to ‘mediated’ properties of Facebook posts. We discuss how ‘mediated evidentiality’ works as a participant's resource in constructing 'what's real’, thus validating speakers' identity.
@article{WILKES202297,
title = {Kinship carers' complaints about birth parents' Facebook posts: Mediated evidentiality and identity construction},
journal = {Language & Communication},
volume = {83},
pages = {97-108},
year = {2022},
issn = {0271-5309},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2021.12.001},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530921000860},
author = {Julie Wilkes and Susan A. Speer},
keywords = {Conversation analysis, Evidentiality, Epistemics, Identity construction, Kinship care, Social media},
abstract = {Popular discourse contends that social media interactions are somehow less valid than face-to-face exchanges. Complaining about the impact of online activities can construct identity-linked cultural and moral norms. One such identity is that of ‘kinship carer’ - family members who step in to parent a relative's child when the birth parent is unable. From a corpus of video recordings of 10 support group discussions, we identified two ways that participants constructed family identities in topicalising Facebook use: by a) negotiating social media norms for this sensitive family context, and b) supporting their epistemic status with reference to ‘mediated’ properties of Facebook posts. We discuss how ‘mediated evidentiality’ works as a participant's resource in constructing 'what's real’, thus validating speakers' identity.}
}

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