The impact of ‘super-participants’ on everyday political talk

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of “super-participants” – people who create lots of content, set the agenda, or moderate debates – on everyday online political talk in a non-political online discussion forum – or “third space”. The article finds that there was extensive evidence of super-participation in the forum, and that they did impact the nature of political talk.

Complaining and sharing personal concerns as political acts: how everyday talk about childcare and parenting on online forums increases public deliberation and civic engagement in China

“…Specifically, inspired by Wright's (2018) sampling method for identifying political talk in nonpolitical online spaces, we developed keywords to identify threads where political talk about childcare and parenting emerged (see Appendix 1). The keywords are closely associated with issues such as child food safety, child abuse, and left-behind children in rural areas, which link child-rearing experiences to societal issues discussed in the public realm.…”

Informing the government or fostering public debate?

“…Identifying political talk about public health issues in non-political spaces is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Similar to Wright's (2018) sampling method for identifying political talk in non-political spaces, or what he calls online 'third spaces', we first used keywords to identify potential threads where political talk about public health issues may have emerged (see Table 1). The keywords reflect citizens' public health concerns, covering broad topical areas discussed in public at the time of data collection, allowing us to grasp as much related data as possible.…”